Here are a couple of things I tried to get my layout wired when I got bogged down with signal strenght issues:
I'm in the process of building a new layout in the shape of a double track dogbone folded into a "U" pattern. The "vertical" parts of the "U" are about 30 feet and the "horizontal" about 18 feet.The track is KLine SuperSnap. I wired everything according to the guidelines in Barry's book and other suggestions presented here on the Forum. One thing that I learned is that each layout seems to have it's own digital personality. In my present layout, many blocks had very good signal strength of 8-10 and in other adjacent blocks the signal would drop to 1-2 or less. Sometimes there was a turnout involved and at other times a UCS track but in some areas there was nothing but track. What seemed to help me most was to determine where the best signals were and then remove the center rail fiber pins and let the signals in the areas with 8-10 flow along the track to the weaker areas. Eventually signal strength would decrease and I would put a fiber pin in that area and drop another power feed. The wiring proces seemed to move along a little more quickly once I just let the good signal flow as far as it could. Everything seems to be running well with signal strength of 6-10 over the layout.
There was another little thing I tried to speed things up a little. In general I would check the signal strength by running the engine very slowly and checking the readings with the handheld as advised in the DCS literature. When I wanted to quickly check the potential signal strength around the layout, I would run the engine at 15 mph and not use the signal check mode on the handheld. While running the engine I found that if I could turn the lights or smoke on and off, the signal strength was satisfactory to run the trains properly. If areas were noted where the smoke and lights could not be turned on and off, I would go back and improve those areas.
Hope this helps a little when you run into signal strength issues and want to try something a litte different when all else is not working.
Ed
Shrewsbury, MA
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