Good idea for powering accessories?

I have a similar system for my lighting. I attached two, long 14 gauge solid wires (house wiring with the insulation stripped off), running around the perimeter of the layout. Those are attached to my "lighting" transformer (a KW).  Real easy to attach any kind of wire to them.

Roger

This idea has been around for many years. "N" Gauge flex track is commonly used.

Or you could use telephone twisted-pair cabling. It is very fine, solid copper wire, with usually 24 twisted-pair color coded wires. I ran such a cable to a few specific sections under the layout, where lighted building are located. The screw pairs of solid brass screws into the underside of the plywood, and soldered the thin wires from the various light bulbs to the powered brass screws. Using two, one for each half of the layout, MTH "Trolly Controllers", set at about 10 to 11 volts DC, all the 12V bulbs will probably last a lifetime.

Always an interesting topic.  I have several accessory buses planned for around the layout.  They include a 12 VDC, 5 VDC (not much on this yet), and a 3 VDC.  I am debating putting the 3 VDC LEDs on this last bus.  Anyway, all buses will use 16 gauge wire pairs and run to terminal blocks for parallel distribution.

Yes, the tiny wires are a true PITA.  I am thinking about these options:

• Euro-type terminal blocks
• 4-wire snap in connectors with butt splices for buildings (probably only on the 12 VDC bus)

I'd be interested in any ideas for the small gauge wires as well, preferably solutions that connect to terminal strips or have quick connect / disconnect attributes.  I'm not a fan of using track or exposed wire under the layout.  There are small animals and little hands around at that level.

George

I recommend against a 3V bus for direct LED connections.  Different LED's will have subtlety different operating voltages, and you'll find that different manufacturer lamps will be bright or dim running in parallel on the same supply.  Best to run them from that 5V supply with a small current limiting resistor.

I'm increasingly using Wago 222-series lever nuts which I learned about here on OGR:

https://ogrforum.com/t...ried-wago-lever-nuts

While it says AWG 28-12, I routinely secure 30 solid as shown below; photo also shows 24 stranded and 16 solid.  These seem to be getting easier/cheaper to find including on eBay (search "Wago 222").