Where do you buy your layout wire?

There are a number of places you can go:

• Home Depot sells larger spools of 10, 12, 14, and 16 gauge wire in various colors
• Bulkwire.com sells red / black zip cord in various gauges
• PowerWerx
• Waytek Wire
• Graybar
• Local Electrical Supply houses

George

Ebay 100' 16G Stranded $13.00

Purchased ( 3)  500 foot rolls of 14 gauge wire from Graybar in Red, black and green colors. Used it all plus some blue wire.

I buy mine at garage sales over the years.  I have large spools stranded of most any gauge, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 22 gauges at least.  The spools are a few dollars for several hundred feet.  When I built my layout 40 years ago I got a few hundred feet of scrapped  industrial 14 ga, instrument control wire, four strands wrapped as cable.  This was from the destruction of a plant that had an explosion.  They will not use recovered wiring during reconstruction.

For my train layout, postwar layout with ac wiring, I learned not to use paired or twisted wire on my Marx switches.  If I ran the ground and 14 ac paired or twisted, induction between the wires occurred and the switches would not operate.  After finding this issue I split up the 18ga lamp zip wire I used for things like lighting too.

Charlie

THank you everyone. I did not want to use the bay, my local lowes did not have what I needed, but i think Greybar may be the answer. Thank you,

Paul

Not twisted, but see speaker wire.

https://www.monoprice.com/

I agree with Oman on the Monoprice wire, probably pretty close to the OGR wire. I used OGR wire for my layout, still have some left. When it's gone I will be using the Monoprice wire myself. 

Here's a direct link to the wire posted by forum member Gilly a while back:  Monoprice #12 Speaker Wire from this link you can select other sizes and lengths of this same wire.

I only used this paired wire for track power, wiring it for DCS operation with MTH terminal blocks. The wire at Lowes or Home Deopt is probably better for switches, accessories, lighting, etc.  I was set on using stranded wire for everything, but ended up using #18 thermostat wire for my switches, lighting and accessories. It's available in at least 2, 3, 5, 7, & 8 conductors. It's solid wire, but it worked better than I expected it would for the things I used it on. When I was doing this a few years ago it was difficult to find the smaller wire in stranded with multiple conductors in smaller quantities.

I get 16/2 speaker wire at HD.  One side is copper colored, the other is silver.

I have used trailer wire from Menards.  

I get all my wire from Amazon.  

The Track wire comes from OGR, the Terminal Blocks from MTH and all the rest from local Hardware Store.

Hard to beat this from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod...ge?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Pure copper as well; not the CCA wire typically found at this price point.

Curious what gauge wire you're using for track power, accessories, and switches?  Thanks...

All Electronics 800/826-5432

Del city is where I bought a variety of 16 gauge Stranded 

Monoprice.com. Two and four conductor 14 ga jacketed speaker cables.

Capetrainman posted:

Curious what gauge wire you're using for track power, accessories, and switches?  Thanks...

My layout is wired with #14 to MTH terminal blocks then #16 to all the track blocks. Switches, accessories, lights are wired with #18 thermostat wire 2, 3, or 4 conductors. Some of these wires go to Euro style terminal blocks, then on to the devices. Sometimes using smaller wire from the devices themselves for the final short distances.

The t'stat wire was/is readily available at Home Depot or Lowes in various lengths and numbers of conductors. I had really wanted to use #20 or #22 stranded wire for switches, accessories, lighting etc. But a few years ago the stranded wire was difficult to find in various numbers of conductors, lengths and wire sizes. The t'stat wire was also less expensive. As it turned out the solid thermostat wire worked out just fine. 

I got 500 foot rolls of 16 and 22 gauge wire in red,white, green,blue,black and yellow from Grainger supply. My layout took all of the red,black,most of the blue and green and about half the yellow and white rolls.  I have drops every 5 foot on the track, most of the accessories wired to AIU's, every switch is direct wired through AIU's, buildings as well.

There are 27 switches, a dozen buildings, about that many accessories, as well as many, many picaxe fires,burn barrels and signal bridges.

I stockpiled mine from the metal salvage yard here.  They used to sell their stuff to the public so much per pound.  I bought a lot of transformers and variacs also, I think for 10cents per pound.  I would just spool off what wire I thought I would need instead of buying the whole spools. It was much cheaper than I could buy it anywhere else and got some unusual colors in the process.

Wow - great input, responses and advice. Thank you everyone for taking the time to share.

Paul

rtr12...thanks for the info...

Home Depot

Ron_S posted:

I got 500 foot rolls of 16 and 22 gauge wire in red,white, green,blue,black and yellow from Grainger supply. My layout took all of the red,black,most of the blue and green and about half the yellow and white rolls.  I have drops every 5 foot on the track, most of the accessories wired to AIU's, every switch is direct wired through AIU's, buildings as well.

There are 27 switches, a dozen buildings, about that many accessories, as well as many, many picaxe fires,burn barrels and signal bridges.

I also get my wire from Grainger.

Mr. Muffin has OGR wire, twisted pair.

When this subject came up before someone suggested    twisted wire   Look for plenum wire, either  447960-110BR or 447960BR. Both are red/black twisted 14AWG. One in a black sheath, the other in a white sheath. You have to establish an account to see the price. I'm definitely going to check this out when I'm ready to wire my layout. 36 pf/ft for all you electrical guys.

16 ga speaker wire for track power
Cat 5 for accessories and switches- 4 pairs of color coded wires in one jacket. Cuts down on the spaghetti under the layout. 
Picked up this single conductor dispenser from Micro-Center recently.

There is an outfit called "All Electronics" that sell electrical and electronic surplus parts at really good prices.    The stock tends to vary some because of their business model, but they generally have about anything you need.

Army surplus store.