I needed some thin wire for some internal structure lighting projects over the weekend and found a great source of color coded twisted pairs of wires. I had an old 6’ Ethernet cable with broken connectors. Snipping off the ends and removing the outer plastic cover revealed all the color coded wire that I am going to need for months. Of course no idea is truly new in this hobby. I suppose I could have fixed the broken connector and used it as it was intended, but this seemed like a far better use for an otherwise surplus cable!!
Stranded phone cables, monitor cables, adapter cables. I’ve got a ton of these I keep for this purpose. Great for wiring locos and signal lights.
Simon & Loathar. those are EXCELLENT ideas, many of us have lengths of old telephone wire, or Cat5 cables hanging around the house scrap box. It is ideal for building lights, and other small projects.
I have saved all my scrap pieces of house wiring, #14 and #12 guage wire, even some lengths of #10 gauge used for electrical hot water tanks. That is ideal for Main Power Buss. Just strip the jackets off and you have black and white wires, and red in some cases where you have 12/3 or 14/3 wire.
I once found an old computer that people chucked out in the rubbish room of my apartment building. So I stripped the whole thing down, took what I think is useful end up only miles of cables similar to what you got and unfortunately the power supply was not working otherwise would be perfect for powering a large layout.
Anyway, I found them of poor quality. They are not as flexible as the high quality stranded cables and they are easily oxidised and hence becomes ‘brittle’ at solder joints after a while. I also used them to power lightings and various things but I think I end up just buying the high quality stuff and replace most of them because I just hate unreliable things…just my 2 cents.