some thoughts about that, even though i run batterypower (because of those problems, while the voltage drop is a solvable problem...)
ModelRRs use very less voltage.
Electrical power is a product of the factors voltage and current.
That means, the more less the voltage goes, the more currentflow we need to get power.
Currentflow needs high cross-section of contact to work fine. High current is a problem for the "hardware", it would be better to use high voltage and less current.
But for security reasons, we wont use higher voltages. Voltage is, what makes electricity so dangerous.
So we have to compromise.
Voltage drop is calculated out of the following data:
-voltage source (low: so with a source of 18 Volts 2 volts are relatively high "drop-percentage". Using 200 Volts, 2 V drop wont matter...)
current flow
cross section of the line(cable, track, joiners)
length of line
material of line
So, IMO the really first thing to do is to fix the joiners. we need to have as much cross-section space as we can gain. So, a standard joiner may lay only on three or four points, while fixing it with a screw makes some (much bigger)contact-area. Its a question of the weakest point in a chain. And so your problems will always be the weakest and most worn-out joiner u have arround.
Fixing that will make things much better. Some additional paste is fine. It hasnt to be a paste for flowing current. A well fixed joiner just has to be protected against corrosion. There are fine pastes for preventing car-battery-poles. That stuff works very fine.
We cant change the voltage (or better: we shouldnt), so we have to cope with the relatively high current we need for powering our lines.
we can (as told) fix the joiners for getting the weakest points in our supplychain fixed.
The cross-section of our rails are unworthy to think about. Normally, its SO much, that the rail itself makes NO problem at all.
We CAN think about the material of the rails, but because of the high cross-section, rail-material is a question of corrosion, not of voltage drop. Against corrosion, you can use stainless steel rails (hard to work with) or nicle-plated brass rails.
One thing we CAN do is to supply the line with additional wire lines, that dont follow the track. lay it down in your layout the shortest way u can use to reach a supply-point.
Advantages:
1.) shortest way, less length: minimizes the voltage-drop
2.) u can use a high cross-section of cable that is very much better as your track-joiners ever will be.
3.) u have optimized cable-material: copper for best current flow and less voltage drop. (less resistance)
4.) u have less joiners, in the best case u can lay down a wire directly from the source to the track-supply-point.
5.) optimized joining points: when u have to fit wires together, u can do it for WIREFITTING. Tracks have to be - in the first place- tracks. They lay outside in the rain and snow and trains running over them.... Joiners, no matter how good prepared, will ever be the weakest point in the line.
My experiences from my first outside-layouts are:
using standard trackjoiners will give u -sooner or later- a voltage drop after 5, at least 10 sections of track.
fixing the joiners will give you -depending on what track, what fixing technique, what current flow (running a stainz is one thing, running big 4 or 6-headers another...), quality of source.......- a track length of about 7-15m before there is at least a little voltage drop to "feel".
its a good advice to use joiner-fixing AND to supply the line additioanly. Therefor, 5-10m is a tracklength from supply-point to supplypoint that will give u no problems with voltage drops.
Going over high distances out from the source, there WILL be a point where new sources are needed. No matter what fixing or optimizing u use.
Greetings
Frank
:thinking:
