FastTrack wiring/track insulation precautions & tips

@P&LE_Consolidation posted:

That said, my question here though relates to the wiring and what type of material everybody puts been me there track. I've seen cork road bed used, but not often below Fast Track. My biggest worry is that I will have some sort of electrical short or piece of track that heats up too much and if it is on top of the bare foam board, it will either melt it or start a fire or both.

Now, my solution to the former is to have a circuit breaker on pretty much everything LOL, a tip I learned from my local model railroading club. However the second one is still a little bit frightening. I've seen some posts by several people that have had Fast Track completely melt due to what I believe is too much load on a particular track section.

My chief question here I suppose is what type of material I should put underneath my Lionel Fast Track so as to prevent any contact with the underlying foam board. Additionally, how exactly should Track Power be distributed and by what means?

Assuming you have your layout properly wired and connected, you should have no safety issues with Fastrack. Not saying it's impossible to happen as with any brand of track, but I've only read about it when a layout has been overloaded by connecting too many power supplies and/or you are using too small a gauge of wire or where your connections are loose causing a lot of unnecessary resistance. In addition, if you use a FT activation track, you can have overheating issues if you leave the button on too long or it gets stuck on but, again, these are rare issues and not an inherent risk of FT. 

I've used FT exclusively on a medium/large layout with no safety issues whatsoever since it was built and gradually extended over the last 6 years. The FT sits on 1" thick foam sheets glued over 1/2" plywood with no road bed and I have no concern about track contact with the foam sheet.

If you want to use a roadbed for noise reduction or as an extra safety precaution there are several out there in rubber, vinyl, etc. In particular, there is a 1/4' soft foam grey colored one made specifically for FT and sold on the bay, but I'm not sure it is fire or heat resistant. I've used that in small areas, like bridges, where there is no foam. You could also use automotive sound deadening material as a roadbed, which is very thin.

Not sure if your main lines will be interconnected, but since you have a Z-4K you could certainly wire it so each handle powers a separate main line. If you do have crossovers, you can put a 1 3/8" fitter piece (the one with the wire underneath) between the crossover switches and leave the wire disconnected.

One issue you can have with any track system is poor connections at the joints.  They can get hot, and in extreme cases, cause a fire.  This can also happen if you have a derailment that sits shorting the rails.  The basic rule here is, don't leave the layout powered on and unattended.

@P&LE_Consolidation posted:

The entire layout is being set up as a conventional one solely, so no fancy wiring for TMCC or DCS at the time being.

I would respectfully beg to differ.  Neither TMCC nor DCS require "fancy wiring" to operate successfully 99% of the time, which is on all but the biggest and/or most complex layouts.

I think that you may have been misled somehow in the past, in what you've been told or have read.

All it takes is a little electrical common sense -- the same common sense that will make a conventional layout better as well.

1.) Solid connections at all track joints and wire connection points.

2.) A separate 2-conductor feed wire for every ten feet of track.

3.) Wire fat enough, used everywhere, to prevent significant voltage drops.

That's it.

These three things will make all layouts substantially better.  You'll be much farther ahead up front if you don't ignore them thinking that they only apply to command control.

Mike