From what I have read, there should be a quantity of feeders per “section” of railroad. How many is actually required, say, for a single oval of track and six sidings? Layout is HO and is 4X8 feet (so far) One of the sidings will probably be a program track.
BB
not sure there is a SET requirement, depends on your power supply I suppose. I have one about every 20 feet of track.
Also depends on if you’re doing DC or DCC. You’ll usually want more feeders with DCC to keep the signals to the loco decoders strong.
There is no “right” answer to this question. When I wired our club layout, I put a feeder at every flex track joint just to be on the safe side. Wire is cheap, so don’t be too conservative. A little extra time and effort now can save you a lot of aggravation later.
Thanks guys,
Cacole, you are right! I was just being lazy.LOL
BB
I’m going to run feeders to the bus every three feet. I’d rather do it now than later.
It depends on a lot of things.
Do you solder your joiners? If so, I’d say that the feeders should be no more than every 10 or 12 feet. On a 4X8 layout (loop) that’s one on each long side of the layout.
If you don’t solder your joiners, I’d use a feeder for at least every other track section.
If your yard is isolated, of course it’ll need a feeder.
If your joiners are not soldered on your turnouts, you’ll need a feeder on the first track section on each side of the turnout.
Mark in Utah
The best practices for DCC state that you should have a feeder at each 3’ section of track at the rail joiner, which will be soldered as well. It is best also to leave one rail joiner unsoldered every 12 to 20 feet to allow for expansion due to temperature differentials, to reduce the chance of kinking. If you have a well regulated room, temperature-wise, you can get away without doing this. A DCC signal is a pulsed signal at a given frequency, so you really want to make sure that the signal is as strong as possible at the decoder. As stated by others, wire is cheap, and you do this job ( hopefully) once, so do it right, don’t skimp, or you will be a sorry lad for sure. Good luck with your layout, keep us updated.
The original idea of ‘feeder’s’ was to achieve 100% uniform power distribution and eliminate voltage drop from rail resistance (copper vs. n.s.). In practice, DCC signalling was improved; however to achieve 100% reliability, one need’s to connect to EVERY piece of track - no matter how small.
Flextrack is 36"-39" long. Sectional track and turnout’s are 9"- 12". I
If you want to trust your rail joiners to carry the current, fine, but oxidation and contaminant’s will eventually thwart their electrical ability . tt’s YOUR railroad.
Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and hear…
That’s oxidation!!!
[:o)]
I once re-wired a guy’s switching yard where every individual rail had a feeder to it - even the ones that were only a couple of inches long! It had been originally wired by an “expert” who only put a couple of feeders in for a massive yard. I was tired of always having to use the “0-5-0” to help out, so, since I had to get under the layout anyway, I wired everything! Ran real well.
Essentially, you can never have too many feeders, unless you get the polarity wrong, then even one of those is too many! I used to solder my rail joiners, but no more. I’ll solder a feeder to the side of the rail, somewhere in the middle, and never look back. I always want to run it for a while to make sure I didn’t miss something. Fixing problems is tougher once the ballast has been applied.
Mark C.
I have feeders every 15 feet or so. Rail joints are soldered only on curves.
In many years of model railroading (around 35 now - geez, I’m old!) in many different parts of the country (Seattle, California, Wyoming, Florida, New Jersey), I have
N E V E R
had a problem with rail joiners loosening up and not conducting electricity properly.
Heresy!! But I have better things to do than solder feeder wires until I’m blue in the face. So I guess the Gods of righteous Model Railroading will be coming after me in my sleep now!
Then again, I DO prep my rail joints by cleaning the underside and sides of the rails at each joint with a cutoff disk at low speed in my Dremel. Provides fresh bare metal for the joiner to grip.
My “bullet proof” method is to solder a feeder to every other rail joiner and then solder the rail joiner to the rails on both sides. This, effectively gives you 6 ft. rail sections w/ a feeder to every section.
Mark C, soldering in the middle of flex track makes sense. I was thinking (at my age that is good) that I would put a pair of 18" pigtails on every piece of flex track at the bench before it gets to the table. That way i could use a resistance system and only have the little pieces to do at construction.
Yea or nay?
I can’t speak for Mark C but I sure will give the bench soldering a try. The feeders in the center make sense to me also. It should be much easier to solder one, solid, lead on a rail than try to flow solder into a crimped joiner. I give it a “yea”
BB
Again, the soldering the connectors, and having feeds to the rails more frequently, is FAR more important when running DCC. You can get away with much more with DC. I have a Christmas display that covers 16 feet of 4 feet X 4 feet 3/4" tables. So every year, we set up the tables and use E-Z track for the layout. NONE of the connectors are soldered ( obviously) , but we are only running DC at this time. In 10 years of harsh New England temperature and humidity extremes, we have never experienced any power problems with any of the locos run on the layout, which has one large loop of approx. 70 feet, many curves around mountains , with only one power feed. If this was running DCC, we would be in deep doo doo .
Thanks people, I am using 600 ft of Code 83 with 80+ turnouts and full DCC. I was getting ready to start benchwork next week, as soon as I fini***he room that is, and these type of threads have saved me a lot of time and money.
Thank you.
Maybe this sounds heretical, but just HOW do you get corrosion in the middle of a soldered joiner? If done properly, the electrical connection will not fail, no matter how long you wait. Corrosion requires air and moisture to get in. A proper soldered connection is a solid metal mass. Corrosion might happen at the edges, but the rail would have to corrode in half, not likely.
If it’s a cold solder joint, you’re screwed. They’re generally easy to spot as you do them.
If you have feeders every 10 feet, and solder all of your joiners, then you’re only at most 5 feet between feeders, and in reality you’re a lot closer than that when you calculate in the contribution of the rail coming from the other direction.
If your joiners are not soldered, such as at a turnout, then you should run a feeder to the track on both sides of the turnout, and not risk having the joiner work all the time.
I’m putting in 18 ga. feeders, 12 ga. buss wire, and connecting to my code 83 track. Based on my “rules”, I’m putting in 35 feeders on approximately 200 feet of track and 27 turnouts.
Mark in Utah
Mark, he was referring to UNSOLDERED connections, which CAN oxidize under conditions of moisture present in the atmosphere of the train room. Some connectors may not be as tight as one would think, this allows moisture and air to join together to form an oxidation on the contact surfaces, which of course is a great insulator…no contact, or poor contact…no voltage or a high resistance causing a voltage drop that little resistor called “oxidation”.
Mark, Isn’t 18 a little much for a feeder? Or do you have a 10A motor to support?
BB