Hi All
Brand new to the hobby and loving it. Setting up my first small layout. Do I need a separate buses for each power district?
Thanks
Chris
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Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
Aging is not for wimps.
I’m thinking that if it’s indeed a “small” layout (say, 5x9 or less), one power district is probably “all you need”. You might want more than one bus connection, perhaps insulated joints here and there, etc.
Depending upon how small the layout will be, you may not need any power districts, instead relying on the booster alone.
If you do decide to set up one or more power districts, each power district will be protected by its own circuit breaker. The output side of each circuit breaker will typically have its own pair of bus wires with feeder wires connecting the bus to the track inside the power district.
Rich
One of the very best things about DCC is the wiring can be very simple. Train set simple. Resist the temptation to complicate a small layout with wiring more suited to the old DC requirements. Running DCC almost all your power control is handled directly inside the locomotives. It’s amazing.
With one power supply to your small DCC layout you literally can’t have more than one buss.
You could run separate pairs of power wires to several isolated Blocks but they’d all be carrying the same power from the same output terminals anyway.
A separate buss pair to an isolated Block of track would only reduce voltage drop by a very small amount on a normal sized home layout.
Separate power districts, known as Blocks in DC systems, on a home sized layout are useful for troubleshooting short circuits that trip the main breaker in the single power supply. Whether that’s worth doing or not is a very personal decision. Most shorts are caused by trains derailing. If you run three trains (which can get tricky) and a short occurs you’re not going to take long to track down which train is responsible.
For a home layout large enough to warrant a second power supply (a booster) you’ll have plenty of time to make the minor modifications required to add that second booster. Even a 10’x20’ home layout will take you a year to finish.
One handy tip: since DCC powers the whole layout all of the time it can be useful to install gaps in a single rail with an on/off switch inserted into the one power feeder for that isolated section allowing you to switch off the power to a piece of track. Sound equipped locomotives especially can usefully be switched off. Some turnouts are po
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Since you have a “small” layout, you will only need one “power district” for the entire operation.
You will need one “bus” (a large pair of wires connected to the DCC system), and then a few “feeders” (small wire that attach to the tracks) coming off of that bus.
I hope that was a simple enough answer.
-Kevin
When I first built my 5x12 foot layout, I used the KISS principle, made one track bus all the way around and wired everything to that. It was only later as the layout grew that I wished I had run a separate bus for my subway loop so that it could have its own breaker.
It’s not just size that determines where power districts are helpful. Separate and distinct parts of layouts can be good to isolate as well. It helps operationally as a short in one section won’t shut down the whole layout, and it’s easier to locate shorts if you know what power district they’re in.
I also like to set circuit breaker trip current considerably lower than the full output of the base station or booster. This protects the layout from having too much current flowing if something bad happens.