I getting ready to purchase the wire for my layout and I cant find a source for 18 or 20 ga solid copper wire. Everything I find is stranded and I prefer solid. I’ve found 12ga solid copper for my buss,but no luck with the feeders. Someone got a good link/source??
Have a Home Depot or Lowes near you? There is 2 conductor ‘alarm’ wire in solid, about 20 or 22 gauge. This is what I used for my feeders. It’s not really 2 conductor wire, it’s two single strands, one with red and one with white insualtion, loosely twisted together. Since I used red and white for my bus wires, it was a perfect fit.
–Randy
Menards or Radio Shack have it also.
Electrically, there’s not much difference between solid and stranded wire, however solid wire is more prone to breaking, especially smaller gauges.
That’s right!!!
I purchased my solid core wire from Home Depot. It was on a bulk spool and had to be cut by an associate. I purchased 14g bus and 18g feeder wire. I used the 3M Scotchlok suitcase connector to mate the two different wires. Micro Mark has these connectors on sale for $6.10 for 25 pieces. For this type of installation, I don’t see where breakage will be a factor especially if it is properly supported.
You could try and electrical supply house. Somewhere like WinLectric, Crumm Electric etc… Or if you have an old flat phone wire, those work great for feeder wires.
if you have a non ferous metal recycling company in your area check with them. i bought spools half full of all kinds of wire from a company like that near me. they had every size and color you would ever want and all at bargain prices. no doubt a lot of it was pilfered from jobs sites by contractor employees and sold for beer money. all the recycler was going to do with it was strip off the insulation and sell it for scrap or else send it off to china as is.
grizlump
Many Ace Hardwares also carry the alarm wire in 20 gauge solid
I’ve purchased almost all of my wire from Home Depot. They do have the two stranded “alarm” wire like a post above suggested. Spend a little time in the wiring aisle reading the small print for some of the prepackaged wires, they have all sorts.
I color coded my districts and sub-districts and HD does not cary a large selection of colors so when I ran out of colors there I called around to a few electrical supply houses and found one that carried more colors than I could ever want.
You could also use different color electrical tape for your various power breaks. I once wired an entire layout (admittedly it was DC) with red wire, all I did was run a band of various color electrical tape around the wires are regular intervals and wrote down which color combinations went where and had no problems. I’m sure the same principal can/could apply with DCC…that is, if you want to go that route, I fully understand making sure that the wiring is color-coded for easy ID, I’m an electrician’s son afterall.
I used 26 gauge magnet wire (bought as a spool at Radio Shack) for nearly invisible feeders. Feeders are short (12" or less), loads are very light (no triple headers and very seldom even a helper) on a given piece of rail, and every piece of rail has a feeder since there are no rail joiners. So the 26 gauge is sufficient. I just run the end to be soldered across some emery cloth to remove the varnish insulation.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred W