Mart Posted October 28, 2013 Share Posted October 28, 2013 I have made my mind up and go dcc on the garden railway now sorry to sound a bit thick wiring the tracks up to dcc controller 1, the layout is about 130 foot or so twin track with stations etc plan of layout is below now I read that even dcc can loose its power strength over a distance I also seen that some say use wires on every 10 feet section to keep the power strength up now would that be from rail then 10 feet to the next rail and so on / or from the main power source so if the track is say 100 feet would that be 10 wires to track from main power to every 10 feet section I hope you understand what I trying to put in words kind regards martin for any help on this a plan of my layout http://prntscr.com/2096fa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ba14eagle Posted October 28, 2013 Share Posted October 28, 2013 My railway is about 70 - 80 ft all the way around and works very well with just 2 feeds, equally spaced. I dealt with sidings / loops by jumpering / feeding across from the adjacent lines. I have had no problems with operating 4 (sound fitted) locos at a time with this set up. It does, of course, rely on good bonds being made across each length of rail though I have often thought about the other method regularly employed by dcc users and that is running a "bus" wire around the whole layout, feeding each length of rail (so as to avoid bonding every joint) - from my very basic view, I dont see how you stop the voltage drop in the bus wire though I think you can also get boosters if you have a very long run of track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris Posted October 29, 2013 Share Posted October 29, 2013 I've written this on track bonding... it should help. You have a loop, so the furthest that a train will be from a single feed will be 65' (20 metres). I'd like to say you will be fine with that, but you may get some voltage drop. If you use a bus wire then it's up to you how often you connect that to the rails (if you bond as well). I have a bus but I don't really use it because its a lot easier to solder bonds between track than dropper wires to the bus. A Hornby DCC controller Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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