Wiring Lionel/MTH buildings-how to?

Here's a page on MTH building and lights wiring

  http://www.slsprr.net/features/wiringIntermmod.htm
Black wire is common and red wire is 14V.  Use 12V for longer bulb life.

I just ran mine to a terminal block and connected that to an MTH Z-1000 transformer to supply the power.   With the controller, I was able to dial in as much power as I wanted, and it gave me the ability to dim the lights to various levels.   

Take a look at Susan's link.

What you want to do is run a "buss" - that's a pair of wires connected to an accessory transformer or the accessory tap of a large transformer.  Red is AC (hot).  Black is Ground (or Common).  The buss should travel around under the layout to the locations of buildings. 

When you reach a building, you want to run a pair of feeder wires from the buss to the building.  You can use a terminal strip to do that (per the diagram) or wirenuts or "suitcase" connectors.  The terminal strip and wirenuts approaches have the advantage of allowing you to easily disconnect the building feeder wires.

By the way, you jumper the terminal strip with these:

Hope this helps.

George

That's a good explanation George. I studied the question this AM and for the life of couldn't come up with a simple answer like you did.

Agreed, Larry.  Now, not to hijack the thread, but I have a question pertaining to this also.  Is this something you can run from say an AIU?  If you are powering them directly from a transformer/power source, is there a fixed voltage that should be set for the buildings?  What would the common practice be?  

*Sorry Santa Fe.  I'm hoping those questions will help both of us!

-Mike

Mike

I can't reply on the use with a AIU. On my set up I have a separate transformer that goes to various terminal strips and I have another transformer that goes to other various terminal strips. One transformer is set to 12 or so volts and the other is set to 14 to 18 volts. The reason I personally do that is that some accessories I don't want to overpower. I understand it helps pro long bulb life and sometimes I don't want the bulbs so bright, especially some of the LED lights I'm playing with. So with two separate transformers used only for accessories I can decide which power source I want to connect each accessories to. Probably a overkill but it keeps it simple to me.  My track power is completely separate and has absolutely nothing to do with any accessory.