Today I stared upgrading the town light wires to a thicker gauge on the layout.
For many years I was using underground phone wiring. It worked OK, but as I kept adding new buildings and more lights it just wasn’t up to the current draw that the many lights drew. The new stuff is heavy gauge Malibu wire…what I should have used in the first place.
Here’s a hard working La Plata electric guy carrying the heavy wire:
We’ve all done the same thing Matt. Either trying to cut costs or maybe the funds just were not there at the time.
I sprung for the cost of the good wire when I built my railroad, but then my railroad was in “stall mode” for a year waiting for the Aristo stainless wide radius switches to come out, giving me time to save up funds. My building light wire is buried under my dirt roads. Now I just need some buildings. (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)
I used the heavy gauge Malibu wire to get power to each of the town sites. Then I use speaker wire to get from the junction box at the site, to each individual building.
Of course, I’m not an electrician so I’m only guessing that this was a good idea. 
