Dave, no harm no foul. I like that you owned up to your “experiment”, in my opinion it shows a lot of class on your part. Looking forward to more great videos
Thank you, really I appreciate it. I have no problem admitting I messed up. Especially if it helps someone else out. I feel like we can learn more from our mistakes than we can our successes sometimes. I’m looking forward to making, and owning up to many more mistakes.
I've been an electrical tech with a die cast manufacturer for over 35 years and we found several issues with all types of aluminum wire. Over time connections loosened, it was hard to get clean soldering joints, all electrical components had to be aluminum compatible and aluminum wire has a higher voltage drop which you discovered. I've been building an dcc n scale layout for 10 years and all my wiring is 100% copper with trouble free operation. I used 12ga (20amp) main runs, 18ga (11amp) track feeds and turnouts, 22ga (6amp) illumination. My advice take what time you need to wire your layout well.
Thanks for the info. Question though, aluminum vs copper clad aluminum, isn’t the copper cladding supposed to eliminate the issues you described with using just aluminum wire? That’s what I read but it’s so hard to know when it comes down to it what the real world application is. I’m just staying with pure copper from here on out.
We were told by our wire supplier copper clad aluminum was an improvement over just aluminum but over time it really wasn't much better. After about a year of road trips to customers plants to fix issues the company went back to copper wire.
I would recommend using 14 or even 12-gauge wire for power bus runs from the transformer to the terminal blocks. Wire does have resistance in ohms measured per 100' of run. So, the bigger the wire, the less of a voltage drop from a long run of wire. A smaller gauge wire can be used if the run from to the terminal block to the track is short distance, but it would be best not to go below 16 gauge with the amount of current being drawn by the post war equipment. As far as stranded wire versus solid core, it will always be best to use stranded wire if it ever moves. Solid wire tends to break with a lot of movement. This is the reason people tend to use stranded wire in their model railroad applications.
Thanks. I really don’t know what is best or really necessary. I’m not an electrician or mathematician, just a hands on kinda guy. When I started this layout I used solid 12 gauge because I had a lot of it left over from wiring my house. That was a pain to work with though.
Stay away from copper clad aluminum wire for trains(table). Copper wire for accessories is relatively cheap. 16 or even 18 gauge is usually sufficient. The poor man cannot afford to purchase something twice, and, time is a priceless commodity. I agree so much info is merely opinion. Informed opinion is obtained by doing your homework. I am impressed with your honesty and integrity. Truly a sterling quality. That said, me thinks you could be a tad stubborn, shall we say? Great video.
This was a great demonstration to show the effects of copper clad wiring. Even on a smalll layout, it can still have negative effects on running your trains like you said, Dave, probably good enough only for accessories. Primary wire is less expensive because its 60 volt rated. It also comes in 100 foot to 250 foot reels. Also check the amp rating of your safety switches. If they are undersized they can burn up reducing power to you bridge cutoff tracks
Dave, here are a few thoughts for your discovery. Now I don't know your whole set up but I tell you some thoughts that might make your wire upgrade easier. You have 10 feeds coming from your buss bar, and a main feed to your transformer. Every connection has the potential to have a connection issue, even the crimp connectors. I would try you test again but use a infra red temperature reader, with the train operating go around under you layout and point that reader on the wires where you have a obvious power lose, then look for the hottest point and you might find you only have a connection issue not a whole wire problem. However the two links I have below will tell that the length and the type of wire does affect the amperage ability. So if that is to much I'd just double up on the main transformer power to the buss with double your current wire type you already have, then any long lengths double up, and also any place that seems weak add another doubled up feeder. So case in point if your current 16 gauge wire has a resistant value of 20 ohm per 1000 feet for aluminum wire and copper has value of 16, so your doubled up aluminum wires would have a value of 10 ohm per 1000 feet, and that is better then the copper single wire at 16 ohms. The lower the ohms the the less loss you have. www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html www.thespruce.com/thmb/AYAMWatiScPuO-uRGeM_nTYk4F8=/750x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/electrical-wire-sizes-1152851-final-f9b6499b4a564c5e9f644b241a7e619f.png The AWG standard is designed such that, to a close approximation, the cross sectional area of the conductor doubles for every reduction of 3 in gauge number. So using 2 #24 wires would be equivalent, in cross-sectional area, to #21. 2 #16 would equal a #13 wire.
Thanks! I would assume old radio shack speaker wire would be pure copper. It makes me wonder if it might be something else, corrosion, loose wire or rail joiners, dirty track. Or possible just too small a gauge wire.
There’s a good bit of history behind the use of aluminum conductors. In high tension transmission lines, Aluminum is almost universal. Even in distribution work, (the poles on your street) copper is pretty rarely used. Inside residences, aluminum was tried in the early 70s but it required special switches and outlets. And there were a number of house fires that put an end to aluminum house wiring. Maybe the copper cladding eliminates the need for special terminations and greases, I just don’t know. However, I googled the resistance delta between copper and aluminum and found that for a given wire gauge aluminum has a 55% higher resistance than copper (a 100 ohm circuit would have a resistance of 155 ohms if replicated in aluminum).
From what I read, the copper cladding is supposed to eliminate the problems of pure aluminum. But yeah, they say you have to go up a few gauges to equal the same or similar performance. For this I guess it’s just easier/better to stay with pure copper
Technically there is no difference between using aluminum or copper wire, just that you need a thicker aluminum wire to supply the same amount of power as the copper, it's why the big transmission lines are so thick (and so they can be INSANELY cheap, miles and miles and miles, and a couple more millions of miles of copper is absurdly expensive). But for small applications like this, straight copper is the way to go, it's a bit more expensive but worth it.
That aligns with what I have read on the subject, still people have wildly varying opinions on the matter. After this little experiment, I definitely want to stay with pure stranded copper. It just makes sense
Copper Clad wire is inexpensive, but you get what you pay for in both price, and labor installing it, and now uninstalling it. I mentioned it the other day, National Wire & Cable. It’s pure 14 AWG- 2 conductor (Red & Black) copper wire, and it’s made here in the good ole USA. I just had a shipment come in today from Amazon. They’re having a good sale on it right now for a Black Friday Deal, 20% off.
Hey, Dave. I'm surprised that you even found copper clad wire.FYI The NEC only allows 3% voltage drop on branch circuits for building wiring. If one applies this to model trains, that would be equal to .60 volts loss allowed when factoring at full voltage at 20 volts. The voltage drop formula is 2xKxLxI ÷ CM where 2 = the number of wires in the circuit, K=12.9 for copper, L= distance one way in the circuit, I= load in amps, CM = size of a conductor in circular mils found in table 8 of the NEC. #18 =1620 CM, #18=2580 CM, #14=4110 CM, #12=6530 CM. You would need to measure the load or track voltage with a voltage meter at the furtherest distance where the drop is occurring with the full load at that point to get an accurate reading. I have not tried this formula for trains, but it would be interesting to see if the calculations would match meter readings. This formula will give you the amount of voltage loss. To find CM the formula would be 2xKxLxI ÷ VD permitted which would be .60 the 3% of 20 volts. To find the circular mils round up to the nearest value. The K value for aluminum is 21.2 if you want to use that for copper clad aluminum because the NEC does not list a K value for copper clad aluminum. Home Depot, Lowes, and Menards sell #16 gauge primary wire for $5.00 per 30' spools. It comes in black, red, yellow, blue, white, green. I wired my layout using ac voltage colors. I used white for my common ground, and black, red, blue, yellow for my hots. The yellow powers my lighted accessories to make it easy to find under my layout. I also bought LED Christmas rope lights and installed it permanently under my bench work for permanent task light. It's always lighted under my layout. It also scares the spiders away. They don't like light. Some primary wire comes pretined for soldering. It's silver looking but it's not to be mistaken for aluminum.
That’s all way too technical for me! But it would certainly be interesting to apply the formulas. I bought wire off Amazon, most of the wire on there that is inexpensive is CCA. Which is something I had never thought of before and hadn’t considered. Now that I know that, I will be a lot more careful buying wire off of sites like that. I should have gone to Home Depot or an electrical supply store for wiring instead of buying more wire off of amazon, but I don’t learn quickly apparently. So hopefully this new pure copper wire I picked up is ok. If not, then I’ll have to rewire the layout again! I like that you I’m used all those different colors, I would like doing that too. Maybe I can return the wire I bought and do what you did.
@dagryffynhobby Dave I struggled with the color code until I realized that red positive and black negative is the color code for DC. 0-gauge is AC. Black, Red, and Blue are hot phase colors and White is common and is what I'm familiar with anyway. I know under my layout what color I used to control a given track or accessories. They're a limited number of colors and I wasn't going to use white or green as a hot conductor. Another way to cut down voltage drop on a large layout is to have your transformers or power supplies centrally located in the middle of the span instead at one end of the layout if possible. This provides a balanced load in each direction so the maximum load furtherest from the souce isn't being supplied at one end.
I’d prefer not to use solid wire, I had started with 12/2 because I had a bunch left over from house projects, but I found it frustrating to work with. I’m told it’s important to use stranded wire for command systems, but that solid is fine for conventional. Don’t know how valid that is.
@@dagryffynhobby After the intoduction of signal-based operating systems but before the internet the hobby press (i.e Kalmbach, including CTT) seemed unilaterally to prefer the solid trunk line. After the advent of the internet, everyone's opinion went public and ease of installation seems to have beaten out absolute transmission (both power and signal). On conventional layouts (even some small table layouts) I've used heavy-duty solid wire running under each mainline track with solid drop-downs from each powered section of track. The difference between 12/2 and 14/2 in terms of handling is really significant, so I would think one layout built of the former would drive everyone to batteries. Tethered throttles, of course, have used stranded wire since their introduction--but aren't you using wireless?
@@robertmadison2752 hmm. I switch between conventional with my ZW and command with the TMCC and DCS The “scientific” explanation I’ve heard is that the signal travels along the outside of the wire strand so if you have stranded with many more individual strands, signal transfer is better than along just one outer surface of solid wire. This could be true or complete fabrication, I have no idea.
Dave with you running a zw on your loop are you using a quick trip circuit breaker with having newer engines and if so what are you going with great video by the way planning on pure copper wore with my layout drops just looking my make sure my engines are safe
Thanks. The ZW is only used to power conventional trains. The main loops are powered by power bricks for TMCC operation and those have quick trip breakers. The upper loop is powered by the ZW but has a power master with a breaker. So all newer engines run protected. There will be no breaker for the fourth loop but that’s for old conventional engines only.
Dave, in a previous video you discussed wiring your control panel and I’m pretty sure you stated you were going to put 5 amp breakers in line. If you did are they tripping when running those engines?
Watch the videos that TheCreativeMind you tube channel posted about layout wiring, he has some good ideas and recommendations about wiring, some of the methods that he uses may be overkill but what he does makes sense, and he should have a trouble-free for a very long time.
Everything stated was basic electricial shop class and basic science class from grammar and jr high school. Electrically flow and resistance of both AC and DC was basic education as I recall when I was a kid. No, not all wire is created equal. Purity and gauge (hopefully not Chinese) being major factors. Basic knowledge resistance of aluminum is greater than copper. Home building codes forbid aluminum wire for this very reason. I find it hard to believe you were serious about using aluminum wire. Possibly just so you could do this video. The $200 is nothing compared to the money you spent on rolling stock in the last few months.
I may be reading into this and your other recent comments but I feel like they have been getting a little rude and condescending. I always appreciate comments and sharing of knowledge, but let’s be nice.
Come on you have to know the attributes of copper and aluminum. Makes one think this was only done as topic to have a video. Wire cost of copper is up but it’s not gonna make one seek cheaper alternative, realistically why? You have presented acquired trains and not withholding on spending. So the whole wire cost thing is so out of context. That’s all, no rude, nor condescending, it’s just so short of the regular presentations you do. I was expecting to see more detailed review of the “control board” you built.
@ again, that’s kind of condescending. Just because something is common knowledge to you does not mean it is common knowledge to all. I know all about the negatives of aluminum wire in older home applications, but technically copper cladding is supposed to eliminate most of those concerns. Really the only drawback in this instance is that a larger gauge wire would need to be used to overcome the negative attributes of the CCA. Also, I absolutely never just do something for the video. I try very hard to be completely honest and straightforward. I do things for a few reasons, because I want to, because I think it will be a good teaching point, or because I don’t know better. I admit when I screw up, and I don’t have an agenda other than to share the hobby and the things I learn along the way with others. If you think I’m not honest and sincere then watch someone else’s videos. There are plenty of other channels.
Everybody who is a fan of your channel, Dave, benefits from your inquisitiveness. This kind of model railroad insight is always a blessing, so thanks!
Thank you so much. I really try to make videos that are worthwhile and helpful. The type of stuff I would have appreciated when I first started out,
Dave, no harm no foul. I like that you owned up to your “experiment”, in my opinion it shows a lot of class on your part. Looking forward to more great videos
Thank you, really I appreciate it. I have no problem admitting I messed up. Especially if it helps someone else out. I feel like we can learn more from our mistakes than we can our successes sometimes. I’m looking forward to making, and owning up to many more mistakes.
Thank You Dave, a lesson learned and we'll all benefit! Happy Railroading
You're welcome, and happy railroading to you too!
Good experiment Dave! Thank you
Glad you find value in it
I've been an electrical tech with a die cast manufacturer for over 35 years and we found several issues with all types of aluminum wire. Over time connections loosened, it was hard to get clean soldering joints, all electrical components had to be aluminum compatible and aluminum wire has a higher voltage drop which you discovered. I've been building an dcc n scale layout for 10 years and all my wiring is 100% copper with trouble free operation. I used 12ga (20amp) main runs, 18ga (11amp) track feeds and turnouts, 22ga (6amp) illumination. My advice take what time you need to wire your layout well.
Thanks for the info. Question though, aluminum vs copper clad aluminum, isn’t the copper cladding supposed to eliminate the issues you described with using just aluminum wire? That’s what I read but it’s so hard to know when it comes down to it what the real world application is.
I’m just staying with pure copper from here on out.
We were told by our wire supplier copper clad aluminum was an improvement over just aluminum but over time it really wasn't much better. After about a year of road trips to customers plants to fix issues the company went back to copper wire.
@@ken763E so regardless of other issues, pure copper is just more reliable long term it sounds like.
I would recommend using 14 or even 12-gauge wire for power bus runs from the transformer to the terminal blocks. Wire does have resistance in ohms measured per 100' of run. So, the bigger the wire, the less of a voltage drop from a long run of wire. A smaller gauge wire can be used if the run from to the terminal block to the track is short distance, but it would be best not to go below 16 gauge with the amount of current being drawn by the post war equipment. As far as stranded wire versus solid core, it will always be best to use stranded wire if it ever moves. Solid wire tends to break with a lot of movement. This is the reason people tend to use stranded wire in their model railroad applications.
Good experiment. Interesting how much of a difference it makes. I would think 18 gauge wire should carry enough current, but it's your layout.
Thanks. I really don’t know what is best or really necessary. I’m not an electrician or mathematician, just a hands on kinda guy. When I started this layout I used solid 12 gauge because I had a lot of it left over from wiring my house. That was a pain to work with though.
All we use on our layout is stranded copper wire.
We found with our big layout we use 14 gauge wire with no power drops.
Stay away from copper clad aluminum wire for trains(table). Copper wire for accessories is relatively cheap. 16 or even 18 gauge is usually sufficient.
The poor man cannot afford to purchase something twice, and, time is a priceless commodity.
I agree so much info is merely opinion. Informed opinion is obtained by doing your homework.
I am impressed with your honesty and integrity. Truly a sterling quality. That said, me thinks you could be a tad stubborn, shall we say? Great video.
This was a great demonstration to show the effects of copper clad wiring. Even on a smalll layout, it can still have negative effects on running your trains like you said, Dave, probably good enough only for accessories. Primary wire is less expensive because its 60 volt rated. It also comes in 100 foot to 250 foot reels. Also check the amp rating of your safety switches. If they are undersized they can burn up reducing power to you bridge cutoff tracks
Thanks! Sometimes I just need to learn the hard way.
As far as the switches, what spec should I be looking at?
Very good experiment!
I’m glad you found it interesting.
Dave, here are a few thoughts for your discovery. Now I don't know your whole set up but I tell you some thoughts that might make your wire upgrade easier. You have 10 feeds coming from your buss bar, and a main feed to your transformer. Every connection has the potential to have a connection issue, even the crimp connectors. I would try you test again but use a infra red temperature reader, with the train operating go around under you layout and point that reader on the wires where you have a obvious power lose, then look for the hottest point and you might find you only have a connection issue not a whole wire problem. However the two links I have below will tell that the length and the type of wire does affect the amperage ability.
So if that is to much I'd just double up on the main transformer power to the buss with double your current wire type you already have, then any long lengths double up, and also any place that seems weak add another doubled up feeder.
So case in point if your current 16 gauge wire has a resistant value of 20 ohm per 1000 feet for aluminum wire and copper has value of 16, so your doubled up aluminum wires would have a value of 10 ohm per 1000 feet, and that is better then the copper single wire at 16 ohms. The lower the ohms the the less loss you have.
www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html
www.thespruce.com/thmb/AYAMWatiScPuO-uRGeM_nTYk4F8=/750x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/electrical-wire-sizes-1152851-final-f9b6499b4a564c5e9f644b241a7e619f.png
The AWG standard is designed such that, to a close approximation, the cross sectional area of the conductor doubles for every reduction of 3 in gauge number. So using 2 #24 wires would be equivalent, in cross-sectional area, to #21. 2 #16 would equal a #13 wire.
What a great video Dave I have a rear section of the layout where trains slow down I used old Radio shake speaker wire 14 gauge but it might junk
Thanks! I would assume old radio shack speaker wire would be pure copper. It makes me wonder if it might be something else, corrosion, loose wire or rail joiners, dirty track. Or possible just too small a gauge wire.
Good information 👍🏻
Thanks, glad you found it helpful.
great video
There’s a good bit of history behind the use of aluminum conductors. In high tension transmission lines, Aluminum is almost universal. Even in distribution work, (the poles on your street) copper is pretty rarely used. Inside residences, aluminum was tried in the early 70s but it required special switches and outlets. And there were a number of house fires that put an end to aluminum house wiring. Maybe the copper cladding eliminates the need for special terminations and greases, I just don’t know. However, I googled the resistance delta between copper and aluminum and found that for a given wire gauge aluminum has a 55% higher resistance than copper (a 100 ohm circuit would have a resistance of 155 ohms if replicated in aluminum).
From what I read, the copper cladding is supposed to eliminate the problems of pure aluminum. But yeah, they say you have to go up a few gauges to equal the same or similar performance. For this I guess it’s just easier/better to stay with pure copper
Technically there is no difference between using aluminum or copper wire, just that you need a thicker aluminum wire to supply the same amount of power as the copper, it's why the big transmission lines are so thick (and so they can be INSANELY cheap, miles and miles and miles, and a couple more millions of miles of copper is absurdly expensive). But for small applications like this, straight copper is the way to go, it's a bit more expensive but worth it.
That aligns with what I have read on the subject, still people have wildly varying opinions on the matter. After this little experiment, I definitely want to stay with pure stranded copper. It just makes sense
Copper Clad wire is inexpensive, but you get what you pay for in both price, and labor installing it, and now uninstalling it. I mentioned it the other day, National Wire & Cable. It’s pure 14 AWG- 2 conductor (Red & Black) copper wire, and it’s made here in the good ole USA. I just had a shipment come in today from Amazon. They’re having a good sale on it right now for a Black Friday Deal, 20% off.
I am going to be using something very similar, if not that specifically. 14 gauge should be plenty for any shenanigans I get into!
Dam, I didn't know that it would make a difference. I us to run alot of lockout ons😮 to the transformer!!
That's why I bought 1000 foot spool of fire alarm 4 conductor 18 ga solid core for 20 bucks off eb ay in 2018 that will last me my lifetime.
That’s a heck of a deal!
Is that for purely conventional control or do you use any command systems?
Thanks for a very interesting and helpful video. How large is your layout?
Glad you enjoyed it. Roughly 20x20 along the walls
Hey, Dave. I'm surprised that you even found copper clad wire.FYI The NEC only allows 3% voltage drop on branch circuits for building wiring. If one applies this to model trains, that would be equal to .60 volts loss allowed when factoring at full voltage at 20 volts. The voltage drop formula is 2xKxLxI ÷ CM where 2 = the number of wires in the circuit, K=12.9 for copper, L= distance one way in the circuit, I= load in amps, CM = size of a conductor in circular mils found in table 8 of the NEC. #18 =1620 CM, #18=2580 CM, #14=4110 CM, #12=6530 CM. You would need to measure the load or track voltage with a voltage meter at the furtherest distance where the drop is occurring with the full load at that point to get an accurate reading. I have not tried this formula for trains, but it would be interesting to see if the calculations would match meter readings. This formula will give you the amount of voltage loss. To find CM the formula would be 2xKxLxI ÷ VD permitted which would be .60 the 3% of 20 volts. To find the circular mils round up to the nearest value. The K value for aluminum is 21.2 if you want to use that for copper clad aluminum because the NEC does not list a K value for copper clad aluminum. Home Depot, Lowes, and Menards sell #16 gauge primary wire for $5.00 per 30' spools. It comes in black, red, yellow, blue, white, green. I wired my layout using ac voltage colors. I used white for my common ground, and black, red, blue, yellow for my hots. The yellow powers my lighted accessories to make it easy to find under my layout. I also bought LED Christmas rope lights and installed it permanently under my bench work for permanent task light. It's always lighted under my layout. It also scares the spiders away. They don't like light. Some primary wire comes pretined for soldering. It's silver looking but it's not to be mistaken for aluminum.
That’s all way too technical for me! But it would certainly be interesting to apply the formulas.
I bought wire off Amazon, most of the wire on there that is inexpensive is CCA. Which is something I had never thought of before and hadn’t considered. Now that I know that, I will be a lot more careful buying wire off of sites like that. I should have gone to Home Depot or an electrical supply store for wiring instead of buying more wire off of amazon, but I don’t learn quickly apparently. So hopefully this new pure copper wire I picked up is ok. If not, then I’ll have to rewire the layout again!
I like that you I’m used all those different colors, I would like doing that too. Maybe I can return the wire I bought and do what you did.
@dagryffynhobby Dave I struggled with the color code until I realized that red positive and black negative is the color code for DC. 0-gauge is AC. Black, Red, and Blue are hot phase colors and White is common and is what I'm familiar with anyway. I know under my layout what color I used to control a given track or accessories. They're a limited number of colors and I wasn't going to use white or green as a hot conductor.
Another way to cut down voltage drop on a large layout is to have your transformers or power supplies centrally located in the middle of the span instead at one end of the layout if possible. This provides a balanced load in each direction so the maximum load furtherest from the souce isn't being supplied at one end.
@ makes sense to me. My control center was centered before the expansion, maybe it would be beneficial to move it a bit. Thanks for the idea.
Trunk wire--use 14-2 solid copper from Home Depot. There's no reason why your layout shouldn't be wired to any less spec than your house.
I’d prefer not to use solid wire, I had started with 12/2 because I had a bunch left over from house projects, but I found it frustrating to work with. I’m told it’s important to use stranded wire for command systems, but that solid is fine for conventional. Don’t know how valid that is.
@@dagryffynhobby After the intoduction of signal-based operating systems but before the internet the hobby press (i.e Kalmbach, including CTT) seemed unilaterally to prefer the solid trunk line. After the advent of the internet, everyone's opinion went public and ease of installation seems to have beaten out absolute transmission (both power and signal). On conventional layouts (even some small table layouts) I've used heavy-duty solid wire running under each mainline track with solid drop-downs from each powered section of track. The difference between 12/2 and 14/2 in terms of handling is really significant, so I would think one layout built of the former would drive everyone to batteries. Tethered throttles, of course, have used stranded wire since their introduction--but aren't you using wireless?
@@robertmadison2752 hmm. I switch between conventional with my ZW and command with the TMCC and DCS
The “scientific” explanation I’ve heard is that the signal travels along the outside of the wire strand so if you have stranded with many more individual strands, signal transfer is better than along just one outer surface of solid wire. This could be true or complete fabrication, I have no idea.
Dave with you running a zw on your loop are you using a quick trip circuit breaker with having newer engines and if so what are you going with great video by the way planning on pure copper wore with my layout drops just looking my make sure my engines are safe
Thanks. The ZW is only used to power conventional trains. The main loops are powered by power bricks for TMCC operation and those have quick trip breakers. The upper loop is powered by the ZW but has a power master with a breaker. So all newer engines run protected. There will be no breaker for the fourth loop but that’s for old conventional engines only.
I was told that aluminum wire will work but you have to increase the gage 2 steps up. I.E. 12 awg instead of 14 awg.
That’s what I’ve read. But I don’t think it’s worth it. The thicker wire will cost more, negating any cost savings by using the CCA wire.
Always be careful with wiring.
I try to be. I wired my whole house 12 years ago and it hasn’t burnt down yet!
Dave, in a previous video you discussed wiring your control panel and I’m pretty sure you stated you were going to put 5 amp breakers in line. If you did are they tripping when running those engines?
That was before using TMCC and the power bricks that have breakers built in.
They wired houses with aluminum back in the day. It was a dangerous thing to do. Most people re-wired their houses to get up to code. Scrap the wire.
Yeah I’ve read about that, it was a concern when I rewired my house, but luckily I didn’t have any. Just old brittle copper lines. Man it was a mess!
Watch the videos that TheCreativeMind you tube channel posted about layout wiring, he has some good ideas and recommendations about wiring, some of the methods that he uses may be overkill but what he does makes sense, and he should have a trouble-free for a very long time.
No, never use copper clad wire . It just causes problems. 55 years engineering experence !!!
As an electrician, I back you up
Well I know that now! lol. Thanks for sharing your opinion, this is how we learn 👍
Everything stated was basic electricial shop class and basic science class from grammar and jr high school. Electrically flow and resistance of both AC and DC was basic education as I recall when I was a kid. No, not all wire is created equal. Purity and gauge (hopefully not Chinese) being major factors. Basic knowledge resistance of aluminum is greater than copper. Home building codes forbid aluminum wire for this very reason. I find it hard to believe you were serious about using aluminum wire. Possibly just so you could do this video. The $200 is nothing compared to the money you spent on rolling stock in the last few months.
I may be reading into this and your other recent comments but I feel like they have been getting a little rude and condescending. I always appreciate comments and sharing of knowledge, but let’s be nice.
Come on you have to know the attributes of copper and aluminum. Makes one think this was only done as topic to have a video. Wire cost of copper is up but it’s not gonna make one seek cheaper alternative, realistically why? You have presented acquired trains and not withholding on spending. So the whole wire cost thing is so out of context. That’s all, no rude, nor condescending, it’s just so short of the regular presentations you do. I was expecting to see more detailed review of the “control board” you built.
@ again, that’s kind of condescending. Just because something is common knowledge to you does not mean it is common knowledge to all. I know all about the negatives of aluminum wire in older home applications, but technically copper cladding is supposed to eliminate most of those concerns. Really the only drawback in this instance is that a larger gauge wire would need to be used to overcome the negative attributes of the CCA.
Also, I absolutely never just do something for the video. I try very hard to be completely honest and straightforward. I do things for a few reasons, because I want to, because I think it will be a good teaching point, or because I don’t know better. I admit when I screw up, and I don’t have an agenda other than to share the hobby and the things I learn along the way with others. If you think I’m not honest and sincere then watch someone else’s videos. There are plenty of other channels.