When I have track feeders like in this picture…
Should I cut the rails between every feeder to divide the track into sections with one feeder in every section, or should the rail be uncut? Yea I know, stupid question… [:)]
Depends what the intent of the feeders is for. If your intent is to ensure power to all areas of the layout to negate effects of dirty track and loose rail joints, what you have diagrammed is fine. If your intent is to break your layout into blocks so that you can signal it or control it with traditional DC cabs, then yes, you’ll need to cut gaps. Also, gaps are helpful for DCC since it allows electical shorts to be isolated and tracked down (and killed!)
RedGrey
My intent is to give the layout a more even power distribution. Or as george745 answered in the post ‘Extra track feeders?’.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=42257
‘The reason for feeders is that it gives the layout a more even power distribution. If you connect the wires to one side of the layout the far side would have a power loss. By putting in feeders in you make sure every track section is getting equal power. With DCC when you loss power the decoder has a problem recieving the information from the system.’
Then you probably don’t need to worry about having gaps.
First…Old cliche’…“the only stupid question is the one not asked” Cliche’s become cliches because they get repeated a lot, because they’re true.
Now to the question. As above, if your’re dividing your track into segments to isolate a potential problem for ease of trouble shooting you’ll need gaps. If you’re adding feeders for electrical continuity you won’t. My system is to solder every other rail joiner to it’s adjacent rails and a feeder to the rail joiner. Alternate joints are left with just a friction fit rail joiner and a SMALL gap to provide for expansion. This makes my smallest electrical track section 6’ long w/each one connected to the block feeder (12 guage) by a 22 guage track feeder. For control blocks (I’m “old style” DC) I gap one rail and use the other as a common w/ feeders as above. Bullet proof!
Not a stupid question, actually a pretty good one. A stupid question is “which DCC system should I buy”. No need to isolate every section of track.
i too put a feeder on EVERY piece of track even if only 4" long…this will ensure that every rail is powered and not hoping that power is fed thru the fishplates… i am building a new layout with DCC and will have the track isolated for each section… i will not use switches to isolate i will use terminal boxes with crimped connectors… this will aid with fault finding…peter
Electro, I believe that you have already studied Joe’s method of minimizing the deleterious effects of shorts on layouts that run large numbers of sound-equipped locos on them concurrently. If so, then you know that gapping IS important, as is the rather elegant and simple light bulb buffer. If not, then please find the item in one of the early pages of his Clinic on DCC and make up your mind to build that protection into your layout. It is too simple, cheap, and effective to NOT do it, especially if you want trouble-free ops with four or more QSI locos on it.
You must love soldering, I think that would be overkill, then again DCC sounds like it needs perfect connections.
Short answer - NO. Uncut the electricity can get to the train in multiple ways.
Don’t you know that the only stooopid question is the one I haven’t gotten around to asking yet! [D)]
Right now my layout is basicly a 4 X 10 oval with a few sidings coming off of it. I am running DC but wiring for DCC up until this weekend I only had the feeders on the first section connected to the power buss. The train ran fine but I could see a few small speed changes as it went around the loop. After I hooked all of the feeders to the buss the train runs as smooth and steady as I could want. Soldering and rail joiners work but adding feeders makes it work better even in DC.
In this case at least the experts were right.