Arnold D. Cribari posted:Today I spent several hours under my train tables to see if adjustments could be made to the wiring in order to eliminate voltage drops on the layout. As shown below, I have a huge nest of wires in front of my transformer.
The thick white wires are connected to the track with lock-ons, and the other end of the feeder wires are soldered to 2 copper strips (one hot and one ground) in front of the transformer. And short wires run between the hot copper strip to the transformer, and the ground copper strip to the transformer.
Climbing under the train tables is my yoga. It involves a lot of bending and stretching. I feel like a contortionist when I make these dives under the tables. LOL
What I did today only slightly improved the performance of my trains on the layout. However, it was good for me to take some action. I made a New Years Resolution that in January (after the holidays), I will eliminate the voltage drops by completely re-wiring my layout the proper way. I will run bus wires underneath the tables, and for every few feet of track I will run feeder wires from the track to the bus wires. There will be only be 2 wires (the bus wires) connected to the transformer for track power.
Arnold
Does your layout have blocks? If not the the bus wire with the drops should work fine. Use 14 gauge wire minimum for the bus and the track feeders. You should see no voltage drop that way.
