Okay, good. A straightforward clear answer. I like that.
I don’t mind putting more effort up front if it avoids problems later.
Thanks,
Robert
Ponder this. Many people post having issues with sound dropouts, and it’s always blamed on dirty track, or dirty wheels.
On the other hand, I’ve not had these problems on either of two layouts I’ve built since going DCC (not counting a simple table top loop I built to test the DCC). I have feeders to each section, and either a #12 or #14 bus. My feeders (HO) are #20. I solder every other piece of flex track together, but there are still feeders to each section. In HO most flex is 36" long. SO i have ----track section---------track section---- and so on. No power problems, not issues at all. Can you get away with less? Probably. But it’s not any more difficult to add extra, and unless you plan on ripping up this layout in a couple of years, go for long term reliability. The last thing you want is the slide fit rail joiners being the only source fo power for a track section. It WILL become erractic as the joiners work loose over time. I don’t believe in soldering ALL rail joiners, unless you have a very stable temperature and humidity throughout the year to minimize any expansion and contraction. That’s why I do every other. Starting on curves - I solder two pieces together and form the curve with that. If you have a set of joiners solderd, you MIGHT get away with one set of feeders for both track sections, but definitely not if the joint is not soldered.
It’s easier to get it right and robust enough from the start than trying to go back later and add additional feeders because a section starts acting up a year from now once there is scenery in place and all that.
–Randy
Hey Randy-
I agree wit
Like Carl said, the quarter test is fairly critical. It’s a good indicator of sufficient wiring. Remember you do not press the quarter down, just lay it across the rails. If the breaker trips - everything is good and there is little likelyhood you will fry or melt anything from a derailment. Test not just at feeder locations but at the furthest spot from each feeder.
How important is this? Well, I recommend that you use downstream circuit breakers to power various sections since N scale pretty much never would need 5 amps in one area of the layout. But let’s say the 5 amp booster is connected right to the rails. If the resistence of the bus/feeder/rail is low enough, a quarter across the rails will draw more than 5 amps, tripping the breaker. But if the bus was too small, or there weren’t enough feeders, and there is just 3 ohms of resistence in the wiring (that’s not much). Assume a nominal 12V track voltage for N scale. Ohm’s law says that’s 12 volts/3 ohms, or 4 amps of current. The booster cannot tell the difference between 4 amps being drawn to run a dozen locos, or 4 amps being drawn because there is a truck sideways bridging the rails (our quarter), and the breaker does not trip. 4 amps at 12 volts is 48 watts of heat. Pretty close to 50 watts. MORE than enough to melt plastic, as my poor melted calculator that my oldest son ‘hid’ in a bedside lamp when he was little will attest. That was only a 40 watt bulb, and by the time I noticed the calculator sitting on top of it, it was destroyed.
Pass the quarter test though, and you can be fairly certain that you will not have any melted sideframes or burned loco shells. That does not mean you can leave everything powered up in a short condition and go eat dinner - most systems periodically turnt he power back on to test if the short is still there and even if it trips again right away, the combined retries can get things warm enough to melt - even when the short IS detected.