On our club layout we just got a DigiTrax Super Chief. We have several CHEAP 6 pin wall mount phone jacks around the layout and they keep breaking, so, we want to replace them with a more heavy-duty jack. Does anyone have any suggestions?
expensive 6 pin wall mount phone jacks ?
sorry , couldn’t resist . would replacing them with UP5’s from digitrax be too expensive ?
In a club situatio you DEFINITELY want the UP5’s, as well as a power source for them. A single power supply can run multple UP5’s, you don’t need one wall-wart per panel. The BEST way to daisy chain the power supply is to make a bus and connect each panel to the bus in the same manner you would connect an individual power supply. The alternate method shown in the manual runs only a single wire between each UP5 and relieson the Loconet cable for the return path.
The reason for the power is that otherwise, having a large number of throttles connected will draw too much power from the Loconet and possibly cause wierd problems. The UP5 can also be connected to nearby track for yet another power source - and in which case the LED on the front will indicate track power status as well.
This is NOT just another Digitrax quirk - ALL the major DCC systems offer powered panels for throttle plug-in. And need them, beyond certain numbers of throttles.
–Randy