Hey all,
Was curious as to how you supply your power for lighting accessories such as light poles, building lights, street signals , etc. I have read not to use power from the track power buss for this and I was thinking of using a DC power pack I have using the accessory terminal off of it. My layout is going to be 10x11 feet. Will that be enough power? Should I do something different? My trains run off DCC, just a FYI.
Thanks, Del
Del:
I use old blue box power packs. One with a capicator discharge circuit for throwing multiple peco under table at once. The second one powers Atlas turnouts and LEDs inside buildings.
Check the output voltage, and size resistors appropiately to power the lights.
Should be lots of power for many many LEDs.
Dave
The one that I have is the railpower 1370.
It depends on quantity and whether you use LED lighting or Grain of Wheat incandescent bulbs, I use both.
The DC power pack accessory outputs vary from 12 to 18 volts and can be either AC or DC. LEDs require DC so they would need a full wave bridge rectifier again the current depends on how much current will be needed by your requirements.
My layout is 14’ x 10’ and I have hundreds of lights, most incandescent.
Because of the high quantity of incandescent bulbs my current needs are high. I use a 12 volt DC switching power supply for my main source. My lighting requires several different voltages so I went with adjustable DC to DC converter for each voltage needed.
The 12 volt DC switching power supplies are readily available on eBay in 3 to 50 amps. Because of my large current needs I use a 12 volt 30 amp power supply and 8 amp DC to DC converters all available on eBay.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=12+volt+switching+power+su
Old DC power pack will work just fine. I use old wall warts which come in 5 volt, 9 volt and 12 volt outputs. I use incandescent bulbs for structure lighting, I think they have a nicer, more realistic color than LEDs and I don’t have to mount a resistor and they don’t care about polarity. I have two wall warts to furnish plus and minus power to my Tortoise switch mahines, and another one to furnish 12 volts to a structure lighting circuit.
David how do you wire the wall wart to say a buss line for accessory lighting?
I used power from old DC packs and wall warts, but finally gave up on having so many individual separate boxes. I now use cheap DC supplies found on eBay. These are 12 volt supplies. I put a fuse in series with each one, and wire each to a switched bus su I can individually control the structure lights and/or the streetlights.
Mister Beasley reminded me about controlling my lighting. I have a lighting panel for controlling all the lighting on my layout.
I put a switchable volt meter on my control panel so I can easily monitor the various lighting voltages for my layout.
I group some of my lighting and some structures have individual switches. My vehicles all have 1mm 1½ volt bulbs, street lighting is 12 volt incandescent as are my structures. I operate all my incandescent bulbs at 70% voltage as they look more realistic, like the real 1950s lighting. Operating the bulbs at reduced voltage also greatly extends their life, I haven’t had any 12 volt bulbs operating at 8½ volts burnout in over 30 years.
Mel
Mel did you design this control panel or buy it? What did you do for the lights on it?
I mount terminal blocks to the underside of the layout in strategic locations, like under a cluster of buildings. I run a wire pair from the wall wart to the closest terminal block and then daisy chain the 12 volt power from one terminal block to the next. The structures all have feedwires that pick up power from the terminal block. I can remove a structure and take it to the shop for just loosening two screws on the terminal block. This way all the structures light up when I switch on the lighting bus, I do not have ( and see no need for) structure by structure control of lights. I don’t bother with fuses or other protection devices on the theory that a wall wart cannot put out enough juice to start a fire.
My fuses for power supplies are to protect the supply itself. If you accidentally short out a supply for long enough, you end up with a useless brick. The same goes for overloads, when you put one too many bulbs on a supply. After toasting a couple of supplies myself, the fuse becomes part of the initial installation.
These supplies have no internal breakers themselves. Actually, some do have internal one-time fuses to guard against fires, but they aren’t replaceable and once they go, that’s the end of the supply.
Fuses and fuse holders are cheaper than power supplies.
That is a CAD drawing of the corner of my control panel. My control panel measures 24” wide by 18” high. I did the original design in the late 80s and built it up in 1991.
The toggle switches are the mini type ¼” hole and the lights are 3mm LEDs mounted in chrome bezels.
It has a .04” aluminum back plate with the CAD drawing glued to it using rubber glue then a piece of .062-1/16” clear Lexan as a protective cover.
It’s been through many redesigns and overhauls in it’s 30 years. Sandwiching the drawing between the aluminum back plate and the Lexan makes it easy to change the panel.