TMCC ground plane good connected to green house grounding wire?

I know what I did was not according to code and gunrunner john will probably have a better method.

I bought a three prong plug and connected the ground wire to the third prong and inserted the plug into a wall socket. It seemed to work fine for the two years I was in my former home before moving. But as I said my method is not up to electrical code. Best wait for more input before deciding what to do.

Joe

There is no need to ground anything.

The issue is that the Lionel signal uses the two outside rails for half the signal (sort of) and the house ground wire in the walls and ceiling for the other half (sort of).

So what is required is a wire connected to the third prong on the TMCC or Legacy wall wart which traverses somewhat over your layout in the room. The third wire (a ground wire) in the house wiring satisfies this requirement nicely.

There is no need to install a ground rod and in fact it is against code and problematic to ground your house wiring ground wire (the third wire) anywhere but at the entry box to the house.

I will add to what cjack said. As he said TMCC / Legacy uses the track rails to generate a signal. This signal forms a circle around the track (Lionel videos - Mike ?Regan?). For ground level track this does not matter. For elevated track with lower level track underneath it unfortunately the signal from the bottom of the upper track mixes in and adds frequency to the signal from the top of the lower level track. So the bottom line problem is too much signal for a locomotive on the lower level track. The engine gets 'confused' and decides to shut down. Typical symptom is stopping under a elevated section with forward lights blinking.

The purpose of the ground plane or even a simple ground wire running along one side of the elevated track is is to cut off the bottom portion of the signal. The NJ guys I think first discovered this phenomena (they published an article in the OGR magazine). They solved it by placing copper sheet foil under upper level track and tying the sheet to ground. When I did mine I could not afford copper so I used regular aluminum foil. I had to mechanically attach the ground wire with a bolt and washers but it worked out just fine. I subsequently found out that a single wire (bare or covered) making a loop under or next to the elevated track  would also work. The wire is just a big circle with another wire connecting it to the wall.

Joe

I extract from the above it is fine to tie the ground plane wire end to the grounding prong on a plug, making the "house ground" the avenue for the excess signal to use to "escape".

Thank you.

That is what I did. Back in 2011 a Jim DiMeo (OGR August/Sept 2011). He tried a bunch of stuff on his layout and the NJ Hi-Railers layout.

I re-read the article. He actually tried running wire to a rod in the ground with no success. I am not really sure how he ultimately connected to 'earth ground'. In the article he states that the normal ground wire that needs to be connected from the command base to common ground for the track be replaced by a shielded coax ground wire (it is important the wire be shielded coax). The copper foil was connected to that. So it sounds like the 'earth ground' was the common ground for the track. In the end due to layout constraints Mr. DiMeo used a combination of foil where he could and wire in areas where foil was inappropriate due to finished track work.

I made a mistake in what I told you. If you use a wire next to the track or under it instead of copper foil don't make it a closed loop. Break it at one end to make it a single end to end wire with one end connected to earth ground.

So bottom line it sounds like two methods:

1. My connection scheme (not really mine - just something I read)  from a open loop wire or foil to the wall, or

2. J DiMeo's connection scheme using shielded coax from the command base to common ground for the track and wires from foil or open loop wire to the terminals.

I would suggest trying DiMeo's method first since once again I think my method has been said to be against code.

Joe

No need for coax or ground rods. Just connect a wire from either pin #5 on the Base DB9 connector (best place) or the third prong (ground pin) on the wall wart plug to lay over the layout or over any problem area without anything connected to the other end. It's just an antenna wire and supplies and compliments the outside rails side of the signal.

As for operating under track, the outside rails of the upper track just shield the top of the engine (where the engine pickup antenna is) from the ground wire in the walls and ceiling of the train room. That's why you have to put the ground connected wire (pin #5 or the wall wart third pin) under the upper track. No mystery or frequency, wavelength, trickery, it's just that the engine can't see the signal carrying house ground wire in the walls and ceiling.