connecting10awg wire to NCE DCC command station

T

Thirdrail68

Registered
Hi,

Im looking for some advice. My bus wires are 10awg. My NCE 10amp DCC system has small wire connectors and the 10 gauge wires are too thick to fit in.
The only way i can think this will work is if i connect the 10 awg wires to screw terminals and then connect smaller wires from the screw terminal to the NCE connector. By doing this though will i loose power going from 10 awg to say 16 awg.

Can anyone advise please

Steve
 
From the tables I`ve seen, 10 AWG is rated at 15 amps power transmission and 16 AWG is rated 3.7 amps, but those are stated to be very conservative ratings.

You`d assume NCE fit terminals capable of accepting wires that can take the full 10 amp output, wouldn`t you?

On my PowerPro 10 amp I never had any problems, but the original plug got left outdoors and rusted so I ended up removing the receptacle from the main board and hard-wiring a short length of thicker wire out of the box to a much larger large terminal block.

DSCN4355a.jpg
 
Do you think you actually run your system up to 10 amps? Probably not, most of the time.

Do what you proposed, ie. terminate the thick wire in a choc-block and use a short length of thinner gauge into the NCE plug. The outputs of the NCE connector are doubled, ie. two pins for each pole, so you should bridge your single 10 AWG to 2x 16AWG pieces at the choc-block. That's what the NCE manual shows - forked connections. Simple.
https://ncedcc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200406295/PB-110.pdf
 
How long are your connecting wires. Most of the job of larger wire size is to reduce voltage drop. Short wires, don't worry too much. Long wires - use something pretty thick even if reduced through a connector at the outlet. I use 2.5mm mains cable for the track connections, The power outlet is about 5 meters from the track.
 
Further to this subject there was a Master Class on just this issue of the April Model Railroader. There were Tables listing lengths of Wire Gauges Power Loss etc.

Wire (Loss per foot shown under)
GAUGE. 1Amp. 5Amp
12 0.003v 0.016v
16 0.008v 0.040v

So whilst 10 Gauge was not shown, the loss per foot can be calculated fairly closely to be next to not a lot.

Out of interest, there was also a Table for loss of Voltage in Track. Whilst these were for Small Section Rail as used in HO, it was interesting to hear that Nickel Silver Rail has the most serious Voltage Loss of all. This being due to Nickel Silver being an alloy of Copper (60%) Nickel (20%) and Zink (20%) and having a resistance almost 20 times greater than Copper. The suggestion being that if you have problems install Track Feeder Wires at greater intervals. Funny that even though I did not know or understand these issues, on my line where I have long runs of Peco NS Track. I have isntalled Wire Feeders at the beginning, end and in somecases middle of the varying Track Sections that I have created. Having no Power Loss problems to report to date.
JonD
 
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