I can’t seem to find out exactly how to hook up the bus wire to my Zephyr. From what I’ve read I know i need to run the bus under the main and then run feeders to the track. I’ve read that I need to have the Zephyr as close to the middle as possible and run the bus going out to each direction left and right. This would give me 4 (2 rail A & B going to the left and right) 36’ bus lengths? Would I plug the 4 bus wires directly into the rail A & B on the back of the Zephyr? Or would I run the bus and then run the same gauge feeders from the Zephyr to the bus? I’m really lost on this part. Some more info that may or may not be needed: HO code 83 14AWG bus 20AWG feeders.
I doubt you can get 2 #14 wires into each connection ont he back of the Zephyr. Just connect one set of wires there and then tap off those to the other half of your bus. Or run those two wires to a terminal strip, and then connect the two bus lines ont he other side of the terminal strip.
The length of the run is from the power source tot he most distant power consumer - so if your entire layout is 36 feet long and you put the Zephyr in the middle, your longest wire run is only 18 feet.
I ran my bus wires out and around my layout I didnt set it in the middle and do all of that and I have not noticed any drop in voltage to the furthest point. I think one day I will put in a booster when I pick up more locomotives.
And you probably won’t - the voltage drop is proportional to the current being drawn, so pulling the full 2.5 amps through the wire has 5 times the votlage drop of running a single locomotive that draws 0.5 amp. Of course these are the kinds of ‘statistics’ that you hear nt he news that make everyone so angry - yeah 5x as much - but 5x a 0.01 volt drop is still only 0.05 volts and barely measurably if at all by the typical low-cost multimeters (I’m talkign the cheapy $20 and less kind - which work fine for model rr purposes, they just aren’t sensitive enough to detect differences of a few hundreths of a volt). SO long as you keep the drop to inder 1 volt, you’ll likely never see any speed difference. You can figure in reverse using the ohms per foot and Ohm’s law to see how many feet of your wire you can run before reaching one volt of loss. Kepe in mind the maximum current that can flow is either the limit of your booster, or whatever you have set any circuit breaker for - So if you have a 10 amp booster feeding a power district through a circuit breaker set for 2.5 amps - you can’t have more than 2.5 amps in that piece of wire, so it is pointless to say you’d have 1.5 volts drop at 10 amps - you’ll never get 10 amps in that wire. All else being the same, at the maximum of 2.5 amps, that owuld only be a .375 volt loss.
Aaron, I also use the Zephyr and I just finished running my wiring except for some feeders on spurs etc. All you need to do is run the main bus around under your layout and into a terminal block (Lowes or Home Depot). I broke my layout into 2 ‘blocks’, the mainline bus is one block and the yard is another. Both of these buss wires run into the terminal block. You attach the two wires from your Zephyr to two of the screws on the terminal block and then use short pieces of jumper wires to connect those two screws to your main buss wires.
Clear as mud, ain’t it!
No kiddin’, once you start the wiring of the terminal block you’ll see what to do.
Seems you want a power bus of 36 feet.
Just run your Awg14 Bus wires the length of your layout.
Now connect the A&B wires from the Zephyr to the Bus.
The Zephyr should be placed within 14’ to 24’ from one end of your Bus.
The Awg20 track feeders connect from the Bus wiring to the tracks.
You can even use Awg24 wire for track feeders.