Found Source of Current On Empty Layout

[C855B]

Not "wrong", John, just not ideal. And truthfully 20' isn't much in the world we're talking about. If you're not having issues, leave it alone.

In the interest of full disclosure , the recommendations being talked about in terms of twisted pair are not universally "loved". Digitrax, for instance, prefers to specify parallel conductors spaced roughly 1" apart - so they'd be fine with what you have. Their bias is impedance matching (150 ohms, IIRC) versus noise resistance, the argument also being that impedance mismatch points introduce noise, too.

[Lemosteam]

Thanks, but no track is installed nor are the feeders to them, so as yet I don't know if I have issues.  Just trying to avoid any when I do.  Each bus end terminates in a soldered eyelet screwed to the wood layout base.

My system is in fact Digitrax.

[peteski]

I participated in building/maintaining/operating of 3 N scale layouts (all DCC)  Systems used are Digitrax, NCE and CVP EasyDCC.  We have never measured the lengths of the DCC bus but I'm pretty sure they are more than 20 feet.  The wiring is similar to what John uses (individual conductors). No speaker wire or twisted pair.  We have not had any telltale problems which would indicate that a snubber is needed and there are no snubbers on those layouts.

But 2 out of 3 have separate power districts, so that actually isolates the bus of each power district into a separate bus.    Maybe someday I'll take my oscilloscope to each layout and check the quality of the DCC signal.  I have used the Pricom Design DCC Pocket Tester (sort of a DCC bus sniffer/analyzer) on each layout and found no reported problems.

As I mentioned earlier, we also run Digitrax DCC on NTRAK setups we have at the train shows (with no snubbers) and we have no strange problems or blown decoders.  So I would say, relax and don't snub your DCC unless you problems develop!