First post on this board: I have been collecting trains for over 40 years, I still have the first Lionel HO train set I got for a Christmas gift when I was 5 years old. I am building, with my son, a large layout (23’x7’) and have most of the benchwork completed, beginning the process of laying down the deck and foam base. There will be a long mainline, yard, roundhouse, city scene, and mountain/country scene on the layout on 3 built-up levels. I have built several layouts in the past, however they were much smaller than this one. I have no desire to convert the hundreds of locomotives and electronics I have bought over the years to DCC. My question is this: What do you suggest I use for the power supply? I will be using block wiring with a bus line and feeders to the track and accessories, and I am considering 4 single powerpacks wired through electrical switches so I can run trains on any segment of the layout through any powerpack. I want to use a walk-around throttle. What powerpack systems should I be looking at? How many amps do I need? I would like some advice on this - please help! Thanks!! [8D] Wig
First, the number of single power packs should equal the maximum number of trains you plan to run simultaneously. Do you and your son really plan to run 2 separate trains each at the same time? Or will you each run just one train at a time?
It makes a difference because 2 train max allows you to use simple (SPDT or DPDT center-off) toggle switches for the block selection. If you have a 4 train solution, 5 position (4 throttles, 1 off) rotary switches would make good block switches. The advantage of the rotary switches for 3 or more throttles is that it’s much more difficult to get 2 power packs feeding the same block at the same time, yet there is only one switch per block.
The single power packs should each have their own power supply built-in. This allows you to use common rail wiring and one less pole on the block selector switch. Each power pack needs an amp rating big enough to run one train. If the train is double- or triple-headed you might want a total of 18VA (6VA or 0.5 amps per locomotive is sufficient). Add more if you are running lighted passenger trains. I am assuming you are using a separate power supply (recommended) to run any switch machines and structure lights. The Tech series of power packs from MRC are pretty good quality with decent slow sp
Hi,
Assuming you are staying with DC, from experience I highly recommend the MRC Controlmaster 20. Before I switched to DCC, I had two of them, and at 5 amps each I was never short of power on my two layer HO 11x15 layout.
I suggest you look at Aristocraft. http://www.aristocraft.com/ They have a DC wireless system.
Good luck
Paul
Before you make your final decision, visit some train shows, clubs and shops. Look and listen to sound engines with DCC.
About 8 years ago, I pulled my own HO layout from my teenage years out of the boxes where they’d been stored for 40 years. I looked at my dozen or so locomotives and decided I’d start with DC, and perhaps transition later. A couple of things derailed that plan. I had methodically built my benchwork and put down some foam, and then I strung out some track and connected up the old power pack. The old engines, despite cleaning and lubrication, stuttered and stalled their way down the track. A small financial windfall convinced me to get a DCC system a bit ahead of schedule, and I installed my first decoder in a subway train I bought new.
Suddenly, I was an 8-year-old kid again. It all became very easy. I tried putting decoders in some of those old engines, but really, they were too far gone. As we often tell people here, “If an engine doesn’t run well on DC, it will run even worse on DCC.” So, I’ve converted a couple of them to dummies, and the rest sit in boxes beneath my layout, perhaps to be made into static displays somewhere down the line.
So, evaluate those engines. If you have a large number, and they run well, then staying with DC might be the right way to go. But, as I found, if you have trouble getting most of them to run smoothly, then sooner or later you’ll buy a sound-equipped engine. At that point, the old engines will sit quietly in the roundhouse while the new engine gets all the jobs.
DCC wiring is much simpler than blocking a layout for DC. It’s easier to operate, too, because you don’t need to throw toggles as you progress from block to block. This can be an important factor when running with a “young engineer.”
I totally agree with MisterBeasley about evaluating your engines as I have been a model RR for 70 years ( 6 years of age my first Marx train set ) and have had my share of DC layouts. Then DCC came along and OOH did I ever get bitten. Been using DCC ever since and I will never look back.[swg]
Disregarding the DCC drumbeat, I once belonged to a club that had the ability to run a dozen or so pre-can motor locos from a single power setup. Base power was a pair of slightly humongous 12 volt transformers, each with a full-wave rectifier (the old selenium stacks, looked like piles of saucers!) Plus on one was red, minus on the other was green. Black connected the other termini of the rectifiers and went to the common rail. The red and green busses fed a bunch of stereo plugs, into which simple hand controllers could be plugged. Each hand controller had a reverse switch (SPDT) and a heavy-duty potentiometer. The tip connection of the stereo plug went to the usual power control circuits. Since the whole railroad was common rail, the power routing switches for track sections only needed a single pole.
That system is what caused me to adapt Ed Ravenscroft’s MZL system to common rail. Much simpler than the original.
I suspect that something similar could be built around a couple of outdoor lighting transformers. Suitable solid-state rectifiers can be purchased from your friendly on-line electronics purveyor. A quick glance at a catalog indicates that a present-day bridge rectifier capable of handling 35 amps at 200 PIV will set me back less today than one of the old selenium stacks cost back in the 1950s - and that’s just about four times the amperage and ten times the peak inverse voltage of a yard light transformer…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)