How much rail do you power?

If you want maximum control when running conventional, so you can run several locos at a time on one handle, use short toggled blocks so you can stop or, with some trick wiring, slow one train and not others. A rule of thumb I use is that every switch marks the end of three toggled blocks.  Longest block I have is maybe 5', and most much less

What brand of track?  Makes a difference on how many feeders.  Electricity is carried by your wiring and its size.  You can never have to many drops to tie into your wiring.  How is your track joined pins or joiners?  Russ

I wired my layout for DCS. No more than 10 track joints per block. Mine are less, probably about 6 or so and about 6' long per block. Each block has two power wires in the center of the block, 1 hot & 1 common. It has both DCS and Legacy and has performed flawlessly for around 2-1/2 years so far.

ChiloquinRuss posted:

What brand of track?  Makes a difference on how many feeders.  Electricity is carried by your wiring and its size.  You can never have to many drops to tie into your wiring.  How is your track joined pins or joiners?  Russ

Gargraves using their pins and insulating pins.  Feeders are 14ga, and track drops are 16ga.  Barry once said only one drop per insulated section, so that's what we have been doing.  I did test the actual track voltage at the point the transformer feeds the TIU, and at the furthest point from that on the layout and the voltage drop was just about 1 volt.  ROSS turnouts.  I can, with the new trackage, either have the 140 feet of track divided into 4 power districts, dividing them at switches about equidistant from each other, or 8 districts dividing each of the four into pairs, making 8.  Difference would be the size of the power district ... 35 feet with one drop, vs about 17 feet per drop.

Think about the wall outlets in a room.  There is NOT a breaker for each outlet, only one breaker for all of the outlets.  Your drop in a given section of track gets ganged onto a single feed for that section.  So it takes just a single switch to control that section (block).  Russ

I use GarGraves flex track. Every 3' section gets its own feeders. I don't rely on the pins to carry current.

My power districts don't have a set length. They run between turnouts on the mainline, so there are no gaps or insulating pins needed, as a standard Ross switch (not Ross Ready) takes care of that.

I don't use DCS, only TMCC.

Should you insulate between drops, or is it fine to not insulate just to ensure even power distribution?  I have a relatively small layout, 9x10, so I wasn't thinking of blocks, etc., just even power throughout.  I have four drops total, but three on the layout as one is on a bridge that is an access bridge.

If you are using DCS, or ever plan to, you should isolate the center rails between all your blocks.

rtr12 posted:

If you are using DCS, or ever plan to, you should isolate the center rails between all your blocks.

I have DCS, but I haven't run a train on this layout.  Was hoping to test drive it this Saturday (I still have a lot of switch wiring to do). Did I create "blocks" with my drops?  That was unwitting!  If I did create blocks, I guess I should choose where I want each to be, right?  Is my setup overkill considering the size of my layout?

rtr12 posted:

If you are using DCS, or ever plan to, you should isolate the center rails between all your blocks.

Barry has indicated more than one drop per isolated section can cause problems for DCS.  Thus far we've followed his advice and don't have problems we can associate with it.  The new trackage is about 140' in length, and can be divided into districts by the three ROSS turnouts, but that leaves us in one part with one drop feeding about 30' between two.  Not concerned about voltage drop as that would be minimal, but perhaps DCS signal strength could be impacted?

Got under the layout and it appears we did the previous trackage, years ago, with five-six sections of Gargraves per block, with one power drop on from section three. 

Basil, 

No, not overkill at all. I have had some pretty small temporary layouts like 4'x7' and didn't think they were big enough to need blocks. Wrong, I got random DCS errors fairly frequently. I built a permanent layout with blocks and isolated them about 2-1/2 years ago. Have not had a DCS error since, works great. The recommended block size is by track joints, no more than 10-12 per block, smaller is ok and what I did on my layout.  

The DCS Companion is a good book to get if you are using DCS, lots of good info and tips about DCS there, including wiring. It's available from the OGR web store. I wired my permanent layout following the guidelines in this book.

Basil posted:

rtr12 posted:

If you are using DCS, or ever plan to, you should isolate the center rails between all your blocks.

I have DCS, but I haven't run a train on this layout.  Was hoping to test drive it this Saturday (I still have a lot of switch wiring to do). Did I create "blocks" with my drops?  That was unwitting!  If I did create blocks, I guess I should choose where I want each to be, right?  Is my setup overkill considering the size of my layout?

Good planning is great; nothing beats avoiding "OH NO!" surprises in layout construction.

I have 3 reversing loops that only have a single drop, the longest one is probably no more than 8-10 feet in length but they fold back on themselves so the length is halved.  The longest straight run is almost 24 feet but that section has 3 drops and gargraves tracks so track pins are at a minimum.  When I used to run conventional I had more individual blocks, now with command control several have been combined to make more sense.  I have not noticed any performance issues at all with this arrangement.

Kerrigan posted:

rtr12 posted:

If you are using DCS, or ever plan to, you should isolate the center rails between all your blocks.

Barry has indicated more than one drop per isolated section can cause problems for DCS.  Thus far we've followed his advice and don't have problems we can associate with it.  The new trackage is about 140' in length, and can be divided into districts by the three ROSS turnouts, but that leaves us in one part with one drop feeding about 30' between two.  Not concerned about voltage drop as that would be minimal, but perhaps DCS signal strength could be impacted?

Got under the layout and it appears we did the previous trackage, years ago, with five-six sections of Gargraves per block, with one power drop on from section three. 

Following the advice in Barry's book for my permanent layout was one of the best things I did when wiring it. As I said above to Basil, I have not had a DCS error since I powered up the layout. This excludes 'operator errors' like trying to start an engine on a spur, but forgetting to first turn on the power to the spur , which is something I still do more than I should. 

In your case you have a larger layout than I do and I think I would go with the 8 blocks instead of four. According to Barry's book the track joints are important and no more than 10-12 should be in a block. I stay on the lower side and try for 10 or less. The other thing he mentions is not to split the DCS signal other than at the MTH terminal blocks. I interpret that as running the #14 wire to the MTH terminal block and then using a pair of #16 wires from the terminal block to the center of the track block you are powering. One power and one common to each block. I used OGR wire, #14 and #16 as described here. It's good wire, all copper and very good to work with. 

I use Atlas track and switches, solid rails, and I don't know if this makes a difference or not? No idea really, but I really like the looks of the track and the solid nickel silver rails. I wouldn't think this would be a factor one way or the other? But I am no expert on this stuff either.

It sounds to me like you have followed Barry's recommendations and should have a layout that would perform well with DCS. Many folks here have reported they use the bus wiring method and have good DCS performance on their layouts as well. I think many already had layouts wired this way when DCS came out and just added it to their layouts. From what I have read that is supposed to be problematic, but they seem to be getting along fine with good DCS signals and few problems. If starting new I think I would follow Barry's book, I would be afraid to try the bus wiring when the book is telling me otherwise.

Using the poor illustration shown below this is how blocks are normally selected.  I have separated the track sections so you can see that the blocks are made up from several track sections.  As was stated above I normally wire each track section drop into the block bus.  The gaps are what is used to isolate each block from one another.  Hope this helps a little.  Russ