Okay....I can live with that! That's approximately the drop distance for isolated track sections I will need between my lift bridges, bascule bridges, swing bridges, too! Thanks again to all! I've seen many of your posts out here, John, helping others with their electronic questions and you are a treasure to the hobby! I hope my questions and this post, with the many great replies from everybody, will help some other railroader in the future with this information for their future layout builds.
It obviously depends on the power draw of the equipment on the rails. Sure, if you have incandescent passenger car lighting, the power draw will go up. I probably went for overkill on the track drops as I previously has Fastrack and much fewer drops. I also had issues with voltage sag on the rails, which is why I went a little crazy with the track drops on the new layout.
Power drops will be a whole lot less noticeable if you're running command equipment with cruise.
Obviously, any layout with wiring issues can experience different results. 
I'm using Gargraves, so I hope that will be adequate for the drops.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I bought my #14 THHN copper wire at Home Depot in 500 foot reels.
I want to thank everyone for a great thread. I have learned a lot.
Jeez, I should also just follow GRJ around. I had had trouble some time ago sourcing 14GA THHN wire but there it is, big as life and twice as beautiful in 10 different colors, at Home Depot.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/So...e-22955958/203401613
Great stuff.
Steven J. Serenska
From the overkill squad: If your drops are every 8-10 feet, then intermediate electrical continuity relies on track pins between sections. Fine in the shot term and probably in climate controlled rooms. In my moist basement on a layout with parts of it over 20 years old, I wanted drops on every separate piece of track--bombproof for continuity. Yes, too much copper and too much soldering, but also no frustration from this particular electrical problem.
@Ken Wing posted:From the overkill squad: If your drops are every 8-10 feet, then intermediate electrical continuity relies on track pins between sections. Fine in the shot term and probably in climate controlled rooms. In my moist basement on a layout with parts of it over 20 years old, I wanted drops on every separate piece of track--bombproof for continuity. Yes, too much copper and too much soldering, but also no frustration from this particular electrical problem.
Just my opinion but, the problem with such a concept is, if you are planning on using MTH DCS command control, having the power supply drops too close together with negatively affect the DCS "signal". I learned the hard way, that having the power supply drops too close together (3 to 4 feet) drastically affected the DCS "signal". As a result, I cut a gap in the center/power rail between every single power supply drop. Problem solved. In order to make sure there was complete electrical continuity between every section of Atlas solid nickel silver track, I simply soldered each and ever rail joint together.
My new layout is built with GG track. Because of other design considerations, I have 3 drops for basically each 37" section of track (1 hot, 2 common). The ends of each center rail have an insulator pin, so there is only 1 hot feed per section. The busses runs around the layout underneath, with a single feed for each wire from the TIU and transformer. The busses are cut so there is NO loop. This prevents multiple iterations of the DCS signal from hitting a single section and confusing the engine (and operator!). The result is better DSC reliability.
Chris
LVHR
My input based on vintage transformers. I have zero knowledge regarding command control.
