Call me a troublemaker … I’ve been researching the switch from DC to DCC for a month or so now. If I had a $1 for every person that said or typed that you have to be extremely careful because a DCC short is like a soldering iron that can catch your layout on fire … I would have enough money to buy lunch at the big train show in Long Beach on Saturday.
Now, I have listened and I am being careful to put in heavier bus wire and I am DEFINITELY going to do the quarter test everywhere … at least when I get the nerve to actually spend the bucks to buy the DCC system (soon).
So, my question is, if this layout fire scenario really happens, then why hasn’t Digitrax, MRC, NCE, etc. been put out of business by lawsuits, as there products are clearly dangerous? There has to be a million cases where shorts occured and no one noticed for a long periods of time. Anyone have first-hand knowledge of a DCC caused layout fire?
Remember, I’m just asking this particular question because I’m curious. I have no intention of ignoring your good advice to verify that my DCC system and wiring will handle routine shorts. So, you don’t have to convince me to be careful and I am not advocating that new DCC layouts can ignore safety.
Marty, I have never heard of such a thing. I have been using NCE DCC since 1999, and used a pre DCC system called Dynatrol for 8 years before that. The main buss lines are the same ones for both and I have never had a fire, never smelled smoke, never experienced any sort of hazardous manifestations in all those years on the railroad. Did burn up a Tortoise switch motor once. My main power buss lines are 12 gauge, the drops are 18 and 20.
Look at the below link about DCC and improper use of the product. Scroll about half way down. Read everything associated with this issue. With some people as one of the red neck comedian says, you cannot fix it. Again, improper use of product and not realizing what they are doing. The male species on this planet has trouble reading instructions first.
Many people jump into DCC and are clueless about electricity and what it is capable of even at low voltage.
I 've never heard of any such claims that a DCC shirt may start a fire if either of the tow were to be “more dangerous” it would have to be DC as most if not all DCC systems have some sort of built in circuit protection not to prevent a fire but more so to prevent harm to the command station it self. Also DCC boosters such as Zone share or Zone master by CVP have a built in circuit breaker. I have heard of fires being caused by the chep power packs that came with DC train sets such as old Tyco or model power cheap junk
So I would not be concerend with the threat of fire but rather damage to equipment.
DCC systems are generally designed with some sort of built-in short protection in the them. So, unless you are doing something intentionally harmful or unorthodox wire-wise and somehow bypassing the short protection, I don’t see a fire ever being an issue.
As other have already stated, I’ve never heard of this ever happening to someone’s layout.
I spell Bravo Sierra…over. (That’s military radio comms speak for, “BS”)
Your decoder could go poof and emit its magic smoke, and if you have a power supply capable of melting the rails to a quarter when you do the quarter test, and if your shorts detection circuitry…doesn’t… then, yes you may get some molten metal, but it would take a lot of juice for some time to achieve it. And that can happen in DC just as easily…since shorts are shorts are shorts.
You never hear of this because the systems are both well engineered and well built with quality components that really do detect the shorts in milliseconds, at which they shut off power. You can’t even blink that fast.
I wonder if this didn’t originate with that same school board genius who was mentioned, and derided, on another thread.
Old Lionel transformers could put up to 75 watts on the rails at full throttle, and the voltage was higher. The same is true for present-day three rail AC systems. If they were even a potential fire hazard the Consumer Product Safety Commission would be all over them.
By way of contrast, a five amp DCC power station only puts 60 watts on the rails. If circuits are protected by the tried and true automotive bulb in series, this drops to 24 watts.
In sixty years of following the local news, I have never heard of a fire caused by a model railroad. When the cause of fire was electrical, it usually involved overloaded 120V circuits (somebody stuck a nickel in the socket and screwed the blown fuse back in) or frayed 120VAC cords arcing over in the presence of something a lot more flammable than the average layout.
I agree with Crandell. The whole base premise has the delicate aroma of bovine excrement.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with circuit breaker protected power supplies)
Now that´s a new one for me! I am A DCC user since the 1990´s and I have never heard of a layout fire being caused by a DCC system before. Yes, I have had a decoder melting down due to overload, caused by binding gears and a decoder, which was not designed for the amps the motor drew, but that´was all.
If this were a serious discussion, I could see our insurance rates going up! [:D]
This is just a rumor started by someone with little or no knowledge of DCC. I say DCC, because it’s obvious that the originator is trying to justify his/her own feelings against DCC. Fact is DC and AC can caue fires too. I used to teach Boy Scouts how to start a fire with a 9 volt battery and a piece of steel wool. Ever see what can happen if you drop one of those coin cell batteries in a pants pocket full of change?
The only “fire” I’ve ever seen at a train meet was a smoking Lionel Transformer. We had already unplugged it and moved it to the parking lot when the fire department arrived. There never was any actual flame.
Melt wire, ties, maybe a little scenery but a fire? No. Maybe if you really try you could. Perhaps if you run a 20 foot buss through extruded foam and paper scenery with 28 Ga wire and put a 10 amp booster on it. I would imagine the end of the feeders would burn off first before a fire would start.
Maybe Mythbusters can try this out before they break out the C4.
Start a fire? I’ve not read that before. I have read that there is enough ‘juice’ to cause a shorted DCC system to act like a spot welder and have the potential to spot weld a shorted set of wheels to the rail if the short is not sense by the command station. That’s the reason why heavier gauge wire should be used for the bus lines and why to perform the ‘quarter test.’ The quarter test is meant to see if the system is properly shutting down when a short occurs. As evidence to the potential look at the TTX report on autoreversers. The slower to react units with a mechanical relay show a spark between the rail and the wheels when the short occurs. Unresolved, the short, especially on an 8 amp or 10 amp system has the potential to do damage.
I suppose you could IF you really tried hard enough and old Murphy could be enough places at the same time. The DCC systems I’ve seen are very well designed to prevent just such a thing from happening. Even if I have my Digitrax Zephyr and my Bachmann booster going full tilt all that will happen when I drop a quarter on the track is that the whole thing will instantly shut down. The closest I ever came to having a layout fire was on DC when a Life-Like power pack used to control an extended spur shorted out. It had no short protection so just kept dumping power to the rails until the transformer coil inside it melted. The only overheat mishap I’ve had with DCC was with a bad board in an Athearn locomotive. The board went up in smoke and that was it. Nothing else happened. The system shut down just like it was supposed to. All I had to do was kill that block and the rest of the layout was still usable while I removed the defective loco.
Our forum buddy Cudaken had the worst case scenario where his wiring caused the short protection in his MRC 8 amp booster to be defeated. It let the smoke out of numerous decoders, may have even caused the odd spot weld on a metal wheel, but his garage is still standing.
DCC causing a fire? Yes it could happen. I had a loco derail on a Peco switch when I left the room with the train running and when i returned many minutes later I didn’t pay any attention to the stopped train. But I did smell melting plastic. When I looked around for it I noticed the derailed loco and the strong odor of the plastic. The loco had derailed and a wheel made contact with a rail of the opposite polarity and caused a short but the short was not drawing the amount of current to trip the boosters circuit breaker. The rail at the point of contact was glowing red and the plastic on the truck and the plastic ties and frog were melting. Had this condition not been removed, how much longer would it have been before the melted plastic would ignite? This was on a 5 amp super empire builder, N scale voltage setting. Ever have a coil on a switch machine burn out due to a stuck button? It is fortuate that the coil wire opens to stop the current flow. When I was working I had a coworker who enjoyed wrapping a piece of thin wire around a pencil to make a coil. He then put it between the + and - 12 volt power on a terminal board and when the coil lit up he would light a cigarrett with it.
Having been through a house fire at the age of 13, I can tell you the thought of another one scares the heck out of me. I am super cautious about anything that can instigate one, and have a house full of detectors and fire extinguishers. And yes, I’ve had fire training with two major oil companies as to causes, precautions, and actual fire fighting.
That being said, the previous posters were right on. Used as directed, DCC systems are as safe as plugging in your tv or other appliances. Trouble enters the picture when folks that “don’t know what they are doing” make their own power supply or modify the innards of the systems, and the like.
Frankly, the real danger of a “layout fire” is stuff like the mis-use of a soldering iron, or open flame torch, or improper lighting. And, having electrical connections left turned on when you leave the layout room is also a potential contributor to disaster.
I strongly urge you to have a smoke detector or two mounted in your layout room, and to fix your layout wiring so that you can easily turn off ALL room power when you go.
I’ve been a Digitrax DCC user/owner for over 10 years. I’ve smoked a few decoders (My Bad) but never woried about a fire. My DCC system is on a dedicated 20 AMP circuit protected by a circuit breaker; electrical outlet has an eletronics grade power stip with circuit breaker; DCC 5 AMP power supplies have circuit breakers; DCC command station (DCS100) and Booster (BD150) have circuit breakers; layout uses 12ga buss wire and divided into prower districts. Why all of this safety protection? Significant investment in eletronics, but not a worry about starting a fire.
Other than smoked decoders or boosters the systems are pretty safe.
One thing that amazes me is that we haven’t seen fires from people using alcohol in cleaning cars, especially powered ones. You have fresh alcohol on the tracks with potentially sparking engine wheels. Another is where people clean the tracks with alcohol while running trains. Same threat but worse if some spills.
We must have both worked with the same guy! No, not really, but back in the 70s when smoking in the workplace was permitted, a co-worker used to make a coil of wire, attach it to a variable voltage/current power supply, and crank up the power supply until the coil glowed red and light his cigarettes from it.
A) I have never heard of a DCC system catching fire.
B) I have a 10 amp Digitrax Super Chief. I have had a short occur on the area farthest from the command station. It took me about 30 minutes to find it. It turned out to be in the truck of a passenger car. It just tripped the breaker every time I turned the power on. Nothing was damaged and nothing got hot. I have never fried a decoder or a switch machine.
While nothing is impossible, I consider your fire scenario to be so unlikely that worrying about it is pointless.
