Ok im looking on ebay for cheap bus wire preferably 16awg but i get alot of stuff for speaker wiring and marine wiring.Succh as this http://cgi.ebay.com/High-Quality-Speaker-Wire-Cable-16-Gauge-AWG-50FT-NEW_W0QQitemZ230005823301QQihZ013QQcategoryZ14966QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem, AS long as its 16 awg will it work? I think it would but not sure because wire is wire and baisicly every type is almost made of the same thing. Correct me if im wrong… but is it ook
Wire is wire. But I’d be really suprised if buying wire on E- Bay pays off once you’ve paid shipping. Wire isn’t real expensive (though going up) and it is kind of heavy for it’s volume, so I think shipping would be a disaster.
ya it can be expensive im trying to find that cheapest thats both with cheap shiping and the product itself
If your willing to use 16 guage wire ( I prefer minimum 14 guage ) why not just catch one of your department store sales with extention cords on sale ?
Lynn
Romex
I picked up 500ft of 12ga stranded at HD for $30.50
Yup, that’s where I got mine, except I got 2 spools, one of each color. Red and white. Was goignt o use red and black, but black and red would look awfully alike in the dark recesses under the layout. Plus they have spools of #20 solir two-conductor that comes in red and white - perfect for feeder drops.
Don’t bother with the 100 foot spools, unless you truly will only need that much, I think the 100 foot spools are like $20. $10 gets you 5x the wire. Nice.
–Randy
i was thinking about extension cord wire but i wasnt sure if it was going to be more of a hastle to strip and everything. and i would think correct me if im wrong but if it wasnt onsale it would be more expensive then regular spools?
I read that the best bus wire for DCC is solid copper and you should use as large as possible such as 12 ag or 10 ag as this offers the least resistence so the signal gets through the best even to the farthest part of the layout. I use solid 10 ag. Remember the old addage, " If you don’t have time and $ to do it right now, when will you have time and $ to do it over later. " The short feeder wires from the bus to the track can be 14 ag or 16 ag solid and will be easy to bend and solder to the rails.
Ray — Great Northern fan.
i look into as large as possible when i adventualy get to lowes ill see what they have and from there ill price and decide how and where i should get it
The General rule of thumb is:
#12Awg Stranded for a run from the booster of 30 Ft (40 ft max)
#20 Awg Solid for the feeders max length 18"
#14 awg Stranded for all other Bus power.
Tortise wires are #24 awg solid (max run 24") I have gone 36" with no problem
#10 or #12 SOLID for the reference Ground.
Bought mine at HD in bulk off the rack. It was really cheap. They had several different types or gauges of wire, went with 12 gauge.
RMax1
Just wandering about this one how would you make a 36" max run 24" or is this suppose to be 36’ and 24’ ?
I mean the tortiose wires have to run all the way back to a switch module that would power\throw the tortoise.
He’s running his Tortoises from stationary decoders that are located nearby the Tortoises they are running.
But with the 15ma draw of a tortoise - you can use that network/telephone wire over just about any distance and the Tortoise will work. For the motor of the Tortoise only - or contacts for panel LEDs (but why would you waste the contacts for panel LEDs, just wire in series with the motor). For using the contacts topower frogs, keep the runs short and a bit stiffer wire would be a good idea, say #20, if in HO. But fromt he bottom of the Tortoise to a frog right above it, even #24 shouldn;t have a problem, it’s maybe 8 inches total of wire, and only 1 loco at a time can touch the frog.
–Randy
Randy I did buy two spools of the 12ga as well as two spools of 18ga for feeders and was the best price for the amount that you get.
Duke
Just bought some 12 ga solid at Home Depot it was $10.49 + tax for 50’
wow i might have to loook into that at home depot thats not bad at all for wire and i dont need more then 50’ of it
Another place to look for wire is your local auto supply store. They have colors of wires that others don’t have, like orange and yellow.
I helped a friend convert to DCC and where we were not sure we simply ran 2 22-24 ga. wires for each rail. At feeders, strip both wires for the same rail and solder both smaller wires together with the feeder. He had alot of old speaker wire. The wire was a different color on each side and it made keeping up with which wire was rail A (silver) and which was rail B (gold) a breeze.