I have completed all of the wiring on the layout, and things are running great – so a hearty thanks to everyone on here that offered advice, suggestions, and imparted some well-needed knowledge for a new guy like me.
With that being said, I am planning on running an accessory buss in the next week or so for my street lamps and yard lights. I have collected quite a few of these items over the last couple of years and have tested them to ensure that they are all in fine working order.
My question is this:
Since I will be running an 18awg accessory buss with terminal strips around the layout which is quite long – approximately 40’ on both sides of the around the wall layout, will this buss (which will be connected to an MRC Tech 4 powerpak - 16VA) provide enough power from just one of these powerpaks to light approximately 40 street lights (12-14V bulbs), and some with LED’s (with resistors already wired in), or should I wire the accessory buss in the same fashion that I wired the track buss (two separate districts and run each one off of a separate powerpak)?
I also plan on adding more scenery lighting down the road, so I would like to plan accordingly.
Whale… If the LION were to use two separate districts for lighting, him would have a day circuit and a night circuit. Since him runs subway trains, the lights are simply on all of the time
18ga wire should be fine for most aux lighting circuits, and it is what I use, but, LIONS cannot afford terminal strips. Him installs bare wires around the table, and solders to them as needed.
Some of these wires pass through holes in the table frame work, some are stapled to risers and others are just looped around nails. LIONS have to work cheap or not at all.
LION uses a common hard ground, grounded to the building system, this eliminates stray current on the circuit, such as might pass through a relay coil.
My scenic lighting (non-railroad) technique is diametrically opposed to that of the OP. Thanks to a yard sale addicted sister I have accumulated a large number of toy train power packs. I use them, one to a town/region, to power house and outdoor lighting (no traffic lights in rural Japan in 1964!) and plug them into a dedicated 120VAC layout accessory circuit, switch mounted on the fascia just inside the entrance door.
The lamps in my semaphore signals (TTT operates staff-and-ticket, with lower quadrant semaphores) are powered with the local scenic lighting. OTOH, the color light signals on the JNR run off a single dedicated supply. Since that system is all LED and solid-state detectors, a single 12.6V 3A CT filament transformer and appropriate rectifiers provides more than enough power.
The biggest advantage to my system is redundancy. If any one of those toy packs dies, I can simply disconnect it and replace it with a like serviceable item. Likewise for the filament transformer.
(I also use multiple/redundant switch machine power supplies, but that’s a whole different can of worms. The switch machines aren’t all the same!)
Small incandescent bulbs typically run in the range of 30 milliamps each. Your power supply will put out 1 amp at 16 volts. So, you’ll be asking it to power 1.2 amps if you put 40 x 30 milliamp bulbs on it.
Instead, I would go to All Electronics (www.allelectronics.com) and order a couple of hefty 5-amp, 12 volts power supplies. Get fuse holders and 4-amp fuses, too. These supplies typically don’t have fuses, and if you overload or short them, they’re toast, so fuses are a cheap protection. Divide you layout into two sections, and power each accessory bus with its own supply.
