Starting construction of my railroad. Dogbone with about 60’ of track on the 2 track main with staging yards at both loops. Concept is a division point with half under catenary and half steam and dirsel. Three switching districts and an engine terminal. Base station for dcc and dispatcher will be at the midpoint making 30’ the longest distance for connection to dcc base. Do I need snubbers on that length? Do I divide the main into two districts? What about the switching districts, engine terminal and staging loops? I forsee possibly as many as 10 districts if I make each area a unique district. Is that overkill? Using NCE wireless control. Thank you
For DCC with one power supply you need no blocks.
For finding shorts in a DCC system you create as many blocks as would be convenient for finding the short circuit causing your power unit to shut down. You wire each Block through its own circuit breaker. That makes locating the short easier and stops that short from shutting down the whole layout.
About three blocks should be plenty. It’s an individual thing rather than any rule of thumb, just suss out what you think you may need. You only need one power connection for the whole layout in theory unless voltage drop is s concern which for 60 feet total would not be. Power the layout at the midpoint approximately (you’ve already decided to do that I note).
You benefit from installing multiple track feeders even for one continuous layout. You could feasibly make each set of feeders into a Block section isolated in both rails at both ends. Then you can decide later how many of these “blocks” you wish to tie in to each short circuit protection device.
Having three blocks would allow you to add another power booster if the need arises. It’s a little easier to install the insulating gaps and feeders as you build than to add them later.
I have a large layout somewhat similar to yours. I use an NCE 5 amp wireless system with a double mainline.
My initial question is, will there be reversing sections as part of this dogbone? If there are crossovers between the mainlines, reversing sections are likely.
Do you need snubbers? For years, I did without them. Then, when snubbers seemed to become all the rage on an NCE-DCC forum, I installed them and noticed no difference in performance. So, on my new layout, I did not include snubbers.
My layout is a dogbone for all practical purposes, measuring 45’ x 40’ in an an L-shape. My command station is in the middle, so all buses are under 50’.
I have a total of 7 power districts, 3 of which are controlled by PSX circuit breakers and 4 which are controlled by PSX-AR circuit breaker/reverser units. Since my double mainline is connected by crossovers in the middle of the layout, each mailine is isolated at either end by a PSX-AR.
The other 3 power districts are controlled by PSX circuit breakers for a large passenger station, an engine servicing facility and the non-reversing portion of the double mainline. I have a coach yard and a freight yard which currently are part of the power district contro
My layout is similar. I have 4 PSX breakers plus two reverse sections managed by old PS-REV auto-reversers.
Originally I has just the reversers, but as my layout grew I first wired it with separate track buses for the new sections, so adding breakers later was easy.
My layout is about 100 square feet. To be honest, I think I would do just as well with a couple of fewer breakers. At most, I run two continuous loop trains and some switching. If I had thought about breakers earlier, I would not have wired the basically separate subway lines to the same bus as the early surface tracks.
One advantage of breakers is load spreading. You can run a whole large layout on a big 8-amp booster, but that would potentially allow all those 8 amps to flow through a single short. Or you can limit your breakers to 2 amps and reduce that danger. Two amps might be insufficient, so analyze your requirements and operational plans carefully.