I have always used a drop feeder about every three feet and at both ends of switches. However on my new expansion I have soldered most of the additional mainline (but not the switches).
Just tried a few trial runs of the first 100 feet of mainline with no feeders installed yet. Of course it runs and seems to have no weak spots or voltage drops. I still plan to put in some feeders, but do I need as many as I used on my old section?
(I didn’t solder up the track in the new big yard, so I definitely will be using a bus and feeder under that.)
Hoping to post some pics of the new expansion sometime before Christmas.
I, too, have soldered most of my rail connections and have feeders only every six to eight feet or so. And some of the feeders are probably 24" or more in length from the bus to the rail. No problems.
A quarter test is the only way to tell you if you need more feeders. This is one of those subjects that comes up every now and then. Too few feeders can corrupt your DCC signal, cause your booster to not show a short while your feeding 5 amps into a frog and wheel. More feeders will ensure that a short will be recognized by the booster. Feeders are like dollars. You can’t have too many.
If you measured accurately, you would see a change in voltage as you make feeders thinner, longer, and further apart. But, I too have several 22 gauge feeders about 3’ long and about 7’ apart, and I have no problems that I can detect with my analog eyes and ears. In one case, I had a 10’ long shelf with four staging tracks on it built off my layout with a 6’ span of track-on-wood to access it. So, we are talking power routing turnouts linking about 30’ of track, and it was all fed by the longest pair of 22 gauge feeders on my system. Yes, that’s right…two 22 gauge wires about 38" long feeding 30+ feet of rails. No, the quarter test didn’t work anywhere in the staging yard.
My insurance against fried decoders was a single auto tail light bulb rated at 2.4 amps wired in series into the sub-bus providing power to that area of the layout.
All my track is soldered (including switches - I’ve only had to remove one in 30 years), I have 20g drops every 8-10 feet (12g buss). NCE/5amp, no noticable voltage drops, even with12 to 15 engines running.
Yes. Or no. I generally only solder my track on curves - to the soldered joint I connect feeders. I’ve run (for testing) with just one set of feeders hooked up - on my old layotu as well, before I ran the main bus wires. I had the 8x12 loop completed so I hooked up one pair of feeders right to my Zephyr and - trains ran fine! No slowdowns, no blinking headlights indicating poor power pickup. It worked just fine. I previously had a 4x8 simple oval set up as a test track with FOUR sets of feeders equally around the oval and there were slowdowns - difference between all those joint of sectional track vs using flex. The 8x12, even with the turnouts, probably had less joints that the 4x8 sectional track oval.
I cheat. Every set of rail joiners has feeders soldered to it. Some will say this is not reliable, again this was the way I did it on my previous layout, and even after painting the track, and pint will invariable run into the cracks in the rail joiners, evrything still worked perfectly fine, no dead spots, no stalling - perfectly. I could set a steam loco with sound running on speed step 2 or 3 and just let it slowly chuff around for an hour while I worked at the bench. Since it worked fine before, I am continuing witht he same thing on my new larger layout. Do NOT buy terminal joiners, it’s over $3 for one pair from Atlas. I just periodically spend an hour at the bench cutting feeder wire and soldering it to joiners so I have a supply on hand.
Take Pete’s advices as Gospel. I cooked well over $250.00 in decoders and did not have a clue to what the problem was.
Few months ago I added around 15 feet of track to my bench. Had not hooked up and feeders yet, did the quarter test and the booster did not shut down! Added two feeders to be safe.
When I started wiring Phase 2 of my layout, I installed a 4-section circuit breaker board from Tony’s Trains, in addition to a pair of breaker-reverser modules. I powered it up, and put sound engines all over the place. Then I pulled a 25-cent piece out of my pocket and plopped it down on the track. The engine on that zone shut down, but so did another engine on a different zone. I thought I had a problem with the breakers, but weeks later I found the problem - a feeder connected to the wrong bus, essentially cross-wiring two breaker zones.
Doing that test is the best insurance you can get for a quarter.
Try the quarter test at the farthest point for starters to see if it trips. I’m curious if it would with everything soldered. Even if it does I would put them at least every 10 feet or so. If you cant do them all now I would start with one at the farthest point and then over time add them to split each section in half until done.
The trouble with having too many feeders is… well there is no trouble with too many except possible confusion under the layout.
Trouble with not enough is it’s really hard to add them after the track is painted and ballasted.
For NTRAK, we now recommend every two feet. Why? Well unless every builder can guarantee a perfect solder joint every time, two feet allows for redundancy. We just reworked 4 club owned yard modules that have been operating for over 15 years. Found half a dozen cold solder joints that never caused problems because of redundancy.
I’m building my first DCC layout (11x15, 2 level, HO) and have put in feeders every 3-4 feet as deemed adviseable by those that know a lot more than me. I recently finished laying the track for the yard and industrial sidings. Before I wired it, I ran a BLI RSD-15 (w/sound) all over the tracks to check for smoothness. I was surprised that with no feeders (getting juice from connections to the main line), the loco and sound worked on all the trackage.
Ok, that’s nice, but I really don’t want to trust that everything will work just fine for additional locos or in the future. Soooo, I put in feeders on each siding, and anything over 5 ft got two sets.
Note that I solder most - but not all connections. I usually don’t solder areas where I might change later on, and most turnouts so they will “float”.
In short, do you HAVE to put feeders in every 3-4 feet? Probably not if you have good trackwork, BUT it may turn out to be well worth the effort, and doing it during construction is definitely easier than later.
Since you have a new layout your loco’s will work fine all the way around. Over a year or 2 the joiners will begin to conduct less and you’ll begin to see dead or weak spots. Also the quarter test might work at time of setup but as the joiner connections break in and begin to fail, a test 6 months to a year later may fail. There are several things that make a joiner fail including the current passing through them.
If you never saw an equipment failure during a short circuit then you will likely not understand why you should bother if the loco runs fine around the layout. Having sufficient feeders will allow the protection circuits to do their job so you won’t have to experience one.
On my last layout I had to add feeders after I had ballasted the track. What a pain. My rule is either feedered or soldered to a feedered section. Joiners will fail over time especially after you soak them in glue during ballasting. There’s nothing like having to solder to ballasted and painted track…To be avoided.
The idea behind the 3’ rule is because of flex track (which comes in 3’ sections) Rail joiners are not a reliable way to conduct electricity between track sections. (Especially if there is lots of expansion/contraction issues) So soldering one pair of feeders to every piece of flex track helps ensure that it does indeed have electricity.
I’ve run #18 feeders off a #12 bus, 10’ apart with no ill effects. HOWEVER if you are crossing between power districts (two seperate boosters), be sure to check for a voltage difference between the sections. If there is, drop a feeder at the end of each power district. And if necessary tweek the voltage on one of the supplies so they match.
My current layout is the first one I have not had even one power issue on. I wanted to do it right. I read somewhere that “everything should be soldered to something”. Be it feeders or the next piece of track. The first time you spend hours looking for that electrical problem. You’ll wish that you had spent an extra two minutes adding those extra feeders.
I use code 83 Atlas flex track; Atlas & Walthers turnouts. I solder two 3’ sections of flex track and drop 18ga wire feeders at the soldered joint to a 12ga buss. The other end of the track is unsoldered rail joiners only. This allows the track to expand and contract. I use red and black wire for the feeders and the same color for the buss. No confusion, no siginificant voltage drop and no problems with the trains.
As stated above, the Quarter Test is the final process before locomotives touch the track.
If you look at the bottom of Atlas flex track there is a gap in the middle exposing the rails. This is where you solder the feeder wires before installing the track. If you don’t pre-solder the feeders the next option is to solder to the side of the rail.
Thanks, this is helpful but bear with me. I am electronically challenged.
The 1156 bulb is simply wired on one side with one of the feeders from the rail and on the other side with a continuation of the feeder wire to the bus wire?
The other feeder wire from the other rail continues uninterrupted to the other bus wire?