Hi,

I have a few questions that I hope you could help me with.

Since this is my first post I'll throw in some backstory first. I've never had a permanent layout, always temporary layouts that were only allowed to stay up for a few days at a time. It started of with one train running analog on M tracks on a small circle. (Standard starter set back then). This slowly grew with a few more tracks every now and then, and eventually ended up with a second locomotive. Running two locomotives on one single analog block wasn't really a good idea when the newer locomotive was more powerful and would catch up to the older one real quick on the relatively small loop I had back then. That's when I discovered first generation of digital and decided to go all in, spending whatever money I had on upgrading. Not sure how long it took to reach the point it got to, but I ended up with what I thought was a large layout with a total of 4 trains.
For the M tracks it was pretty much the basic starter set with all of the extension sets, (similar to the current C1-C5 extension sets) with some additional straights and curves so I could go even bigger than the "standard loop".
When I got the fourth train, DB ICE2, I also got some K tracks so the fancy train could run on fancy tracks.
So in total there was 8 powered M-turnouts with built in lights and two powered K turnouts with no lights.
Thats when I started having problems with losing power. Trains wouldn't run properly and turnouts wouldn't switch all the way. Sometime they wouldn't even move. This pretty much led me to rage quit, pack up the tracks and trains and put it away in the closet. This was over 20 years ago.
I did try to look into it but without any good resources to help me I ended up thinking I needed a booster since I thought I had a massive layout.
A few weeks ago I ended up doing a google search and came across this forum and realized there was quite a few things I could have done differently.
Normally I would set it up with connecting the control station to a feedertrack, then at various places I would add other feeder tracks to power the turnout decoders and the turnouts that was connected to the decoder. And since this started out as a analog setup there was also a feeder track with a capacitor in circulation.
So this past weekend I decided to set it all up again but with a few changes. All the decoders are connected together and eventually connected directly to the control unit. The analog feeder track is not in use and I have two feeder tracks connected to the controlunit as well. After adding some oil to the trains it was time to test it all out. The turnouts worked well and the trains eventually started to work well too. I think there was some dust/dirt on the ground points. Once that wore off they were running relatively ok. (some of the M- tracks are quite worn)

So a bit more over to my questions. I know it might have been answered in other threads but it is still a bit unclear to me.
I'm still not going to be able to have a permanent layout so going for C-tracks is probably my best option since these seem to be good for frequent build ups/tear downs. The fact that you also have the possibility to build in the turnout decoders makes it more interesting too since it would be less wires to run. So I'm thinking I could get a C track starter set and go from there.
One concern with using the built in decoders is power consumption. However, one thing I keep reading is that it is recommended to have a feeder track every 2m. That might be a bit much but I'm thinking I could make an extension of the red and brown cable coming from the connector box and connect it to feeder tracks at various places throughout the layout. One idea would be to make my own feeder wires where I would have a pair of input wires connected to the track but at the same time having a pair of output wires going out from that same track that would connect to the next feeder track and so on until it reaches the last feeder track where it terminates. Would that work or would it be better to have a "feeder wire hub" close to the connector box and connect all my feeder tracks to that using a short as possible wire?
( i know this wont be an issue on a small layout, but I might get carried away so its nice to plan for it from the start. )

I see that it is recommended to have lights on a separate power source. On my old M-turnouts everything was built in and I ended up connecting everything to the same thing and using precious track power.
If I decide to add lights to the turnouts, what is the recommended way of doing this? getting a dedicated transformer for the lights alone and have them wired separately from the tracks, decoders and connector boxes?


At first I'm not planning on mixing the old layout with the new, but might end up doing that next time I'm house sitting at my parents and have a bit more room to play in.

I have a lot more questions but I'll save that for later when I get more into things.
Thanks for taking the time to read all of this.

if you are going to be building it and tearing it down regularly, perhaps you can create a 'bus harness' wire that is used to get power to a number of places on the layout. Track feeder wires could then be plugged into this 'portable' bus as needed.

On a permanent layout, one can connect the track feeds to the wires below like this:

https://cabin-layout.mixmox.com/2002/02/wiring-track-feeds-to-bus-wires.html

For powering lights etc, yes, you can use a separate power supply even a DC one. Old PC power supplies are an excellent source of good clean DC power:
https://cabin-layout.mixmox.com/2007/02/dc-power-supply.html
Make sure you do not connect the positive of the DC power to the red of the digital track power. The grounds (brown and negative) can be common.