Wire

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

High All

A friend of mine was just here and he knows what I am doing brought over about 125 feet of red and black 22 gauge stranded wire for my feeder wire. Now I gotta get it all spooled up because it is the two of them just tossed in a box. But with them two wires if good to use would be a good money saver. 22 gauge isn’t too small is it?

Thanks

2

Gidday, For DCC I use 22 gauge for the track feeders and 16 gauge for the bus wires.

Cheers, the Bear.

3

22 gauge stranded wire is fine for feeder wires.

Get it spooled up and get to work with the wiring.

Rich

4

Hi!

As indicated, 22 gauge stranded wire will work as feeders. That being said, I much prefer working with solid wire for feeders, and find 20 gauge preferable.

If you do use the 22 gauge, may I suggest two things…

First, make your feeders as short as possible - say 12 inches or less - and of course run them into a larger buss wire (14 gauge is good).

Second, put in a good quantity of feeders, perhaps every 3 feet of track, and a feeder for every siding, no matter how short. In my 57 years of model railroading, I have never heard someone regret they had too many feeders.

5

Damigg

You might want to take a look at Allan Gartner’s page on track wiring. 22 gauge will work but as indicated above, each 3ft section of flex track should have a feeder plus feeders for turnouts.

6

Note that you will need wire to connect things beside track feeders. I use #22 for just about everything - and I’m running locos and MU units with ancient power hog open-frame motors, twin-coil switch machines (also power hogs,) structure lights, panel indicators, signals…

Shortly before I retired I scored a couple of hundred yards of #24 twisted pair communication wire. Since two #24 wires equal one #22 wire, I’ve run that twisted pair as a single connector between terminal strips. All of my other wiring is done with #22 solid wire, much of it salvaged from 50-pair telephone cables recovered from a dumpster in the 1970s. (Yes, in the 1970s telephone repair people would dumpsterize short - to them - lengths of multiconductor cable!) My only purchased wire? #12, used for busses.

Yes, Matilda, analog DC with common-rail wiring uses busses…

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)