![]() Otherwise 14 ga is pretty hefty stuff and maybe overkill for most of us.īecause those wires are not carrying all that high current. The dude who is using 14 gauge probably has several long runs or maybe runs many locos at one on the same feed (I'm a conventional guy, DCS can change things since you're possibly running many locos together and tripling or quadrupling the draws that we have on our little layout). So just make sure your 22 gauge wire isn't it's own fuse, and something is in the circuit that will pop at much more than double the expected draw (6 amp maybe?)Įasier to do what these guys are saying and use 16 or at least 18ga from the get-go. But if it's far from your transformer, you'll be dialing the voltage way up to push the engine into the siding.Īlso, this is assuming you have a fuse or breaker that will pop before your wire does in the case of a short or derailment. So my take is, don't sweat it if you're using 22ga wire for a short little run to a siding that will only be on for a minute at a time (it can safely carry 8 amps). However, we also found out that, even if the wires aren't going to melt, the drop in voltage over a long run to our furthest power districts did create a really aggravating slow down. This website shows that 20 AWG copper wire with PVC insulation and not bundled tightly with more than 3 other wires could safely handle more than 10 amps. We also don't necessarily run at full amps all of the time, so that helps.īased on stuff we researched, using 18 or even 20 gauge wire to run power to the tracks is not going to be a safety problem for most folks. When we do trains, we're not really bundling lots of wires tightly together, to and they generally have pretty good exposure to air under our tables. The pickup wires inside our locos are definitely not 16ga, they look to me to be closer to 20. But I thought we were sizing our wires more to prevent voltage loss over distance (which would cause locos to run slower in areas further from power source) versus a true carrying capacity of the wires? I'm an ME, not an EE, so keep that in mind. ![]()
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