How to wire over 40 street lights

I have a large home HO scale setup and I'm trying to wire up all of my street lights/traffic lights/house lights.

What I had done is run 2 long buss wires down the length of my board and i wrap the + and - leads from each light separately to each buss wire. Then I connect the buss wires to the powerpack.

The problem is that the buss wire is fragile and difficult to work with. Are there more elegent solutions out there?

Thanks!

 

First, welcome to Trainboard!

Second, what kind of wire are you using for your buss? We have a 10 ga. copper buss around our layout for the DCC system. (We would have probably gone 12 ga., except that this wire was provided free by a member.) While that kind of wire DEFINITELY has a mind of its own when you are trying to feed it around the layout, I wouldn't characterize it as brittle at all.

Are you using old aluminum wire?

 

Here's what I'm using. From RadioShack
http://www.radioshack.com/product/i...origkw=bus+wire&kw=bus+wire&parentPage=search

 

I personally wouldn't hook street lamps and accessories to the DCC signal/power bus. I use a separate accessory bus, which I believe is what you meant, David. The gauge of wire you should use depends on the size of the layout. To me 10 or 12 gauge is overkill unless you're building a club layout of 40 feet or so.

I made a small 4 1/2 x 2 foot layout with 15 street lamps and a lighted Christmas tree for the holidays. I used 18 gauge wire for my accessory bus, which was fine for that. Under my 4 x 8 foot temporary layout construction table I use 14 gauge for the DCC, but I don't have any accessories. Most household lights use 14 gauge wiring. When I do any house lighting or electrical socket wiring I always use 12 gauge and professional electricians have told me this is over-kill.

With 40 lights on your layout, I'd probably go with 14 gauge for the accessory bus. I'd also probably use 14 gauge for the DCC rail bus (you are using DCC, right?). Use bare copper solid conductor wire. On my small layout I used 18 gauge insulated because it was what I had laying around... stripping sections of it for soldering turned out to be the hardest part of the job.

 

I wasn't clear. I wasn't suggesting using the DCC buss, it's just that we use 10 ga. copper and I find that we don't have problems with the wire being brittle.

Good luck!

 

Somehow I figured you meant to indicate separate buses.

No, you wouldn't have problems with 10 gauge... once you managed to get it bent to where you want it.

 

apologies, but I think my original question has been misinterpreted. Instead of a discussion of wire gauges, I was rather looking to see if there was a better way to hook up all of these lights INSTEAD of using a bus wire. For example, are there rods that are electrically conductive that I can buy at home depot and I can affix to the underside of my board?

 

The way I have done my connections is by "nodes". In otherwords, I put terminal strips in-line w/ the "accessory" power source bus wire at strategic points below the layout. Just for conversation, say every 48". Then I bring down the load wires and attach them to the terminals. I either have a separate terminal for +, -, or I use one large terminal and just leave each side isolated between +, -.

Some folks use the "easy connectors". I've seen other use bare copper and just solder things below the layout. Which is fine as long as you have the space and discipline to keep it all isolated or from grounding out on something.

You may want to poke around the DigiKey website, or the JameCo website for various connectors.

 

There's lots of different kinds. Simple screw-down bus blocks are available at Home Depot, but they are probably too big for the tiny leads from those lights. I'd look at electronic supply shops like Frys. Something like this, but make sure it has the jumpers you can cut to section the block:

FRYS.comTerminal strips

 

I concur

I concur. Terminal strips are probably the best bet.
The wires get pinched between two plates, not wrapped around the studs. And they'll take thin wire like you're using. I'd run some heavy gauge wire as the bus, as others have said, and have one of these blocks every so often. Connect the lamps in groups of ten or so, to facilitate troubleshooting if it develops a short circuit. Would you rather break it up so you can isolate the problem to 1 of 10, or 5, or test all 40? I do automotive electrical work for a living - I know whereof I speak; Magic smoke is only funny when it happens to someone else!

 

This is how I do my DCC bus, and I'd probably use the same system if I was doing something like the OP described.



The bus wire is single strand (solid core) household cable, either 1.5 or 2.5 mm square (about 20 Amp rating for mains use). It's fixed to the baseboard at intervals by a turn round a copperclad panel pin pushed into the wood, and then soldered when I do the droppers.
The droppers here are also single core (1/0.6mm diameter).

I like the solid stuff as it doesn't need as many supports to keep it in place and reasonably tidy

 

Mike;

How do you strip non-end sections so neatly? I had a terrible time doing that.

 

The 24 gauge wire is way too small. That might be the reason you are having a breakage problem. What is the wire made of. Copper is the only way to go. Insulation is a must as well. If all you are going to run is the lights then I would use 16 or 14 gauge stranded copper wire for your buss. A separate power supply for the light is recommended too as the power supply for the track should be used only for the trains.

 

With a sharp knife (I use the ones with segmented, snap-off sections) make a circumferential cut all the way round at each end of the section to be removed. Then, with the wire resting on the board or a firm surface, run the tip of the blade along the wire between the two cuts. It's not that hard to do, and it doesn't matter if its crooked or slips off occasionaly. Then peel off the cut section.

 

thanks so much for the advice. I went the route of terminal blocks and it's much cleaner and easier to debug than using bus wire.

 

Track power. No, really!

We have a freight house on our layout (RIT Model Railroad Club) and my friend installed somewhere between 15-20 lights on the building. He got tired of stripping wires and twisting/soldering exposed wire together, so he took a segment of old track, walthersgoo'd it to the building, and then soldered everything to this track. + on +, - on -, obviously.

So, now we've got our trains running on track power, our layout lights running on track power (track lighting), and NOW we have a building!

It works good. For small applications, you could pick up some cheap atlas N scale track. If you're doing a long stretch, you could use a segment of flextrack, mounted under the layout.

I might resort to this method when I start building downtown scenes!!!

when, and if, though.