Voltage drop on a reverse loop

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

Hello, everyone!

I have finally put the last piece of roadbed and track on the layout, and now it’s time to properly power everything! The track is live, trains are running fine, but I wanted to add more redundancy in terms of wires feeding track current.

As I read on the forums, the general rule of thumb is to have a set of feeders every 8 feet or so. For the most part I do. But I have two reverse loops controlled by AR-1. Per AR-1 instructions, the isolated section should be as long as the longest train that will be running on the track, so I set up breaks at the entry and exit points of the loop, and feed them via AR-1. That’s all fine and dandy: the locos seem to be running without any trouble. But wouldn’t the voltage drop be considerable over the length of the loop (more than 8 feet)? How can I add extra feed somewhere to the middle of the loop without short-circuiting the section?

Also, while we are on the subject of power wires: do you run an individual feed back to the power source or do you hook onto another bus by splicing it?

The whole system is powered by Digitrax Zephyr.

Thank you.

2

You can split off the output of the AR-1 and run as many feeders as you want to the insulated section. As long as they all come from the AR-1, there won;t be any issue with shorting. Think of the AR-1 as the Zephyr and the insulated section of the loop as your entire railroad - any number of feeders would be just fine.

–Randy

3

Durrr…!! So simple! Thank you!

4

Many times the most obvious solution to a problem is the one that seems to be too simple to work.