I recently purchased a Lionel TPC and hooked it up to a starter set transformer- 80 Watt. I placed a starter set engine on it with a whistle tender and caboose. It started up but whistled without me even pushing the whistle button on the hand/held unit. Once I gave the track more power it hesitated and then fine. Has anyone else had the same problem. I tried a larger transformer such as a zw and it works fine. Any suggestions using the 80 watt transformer.
CW 80 has an odd waveform output unless you run it at full throttle. The TPC will regulate your track power for you. The TPC was meant to be be driven by Power House bricks. These are 135 or 180 watt devices and they are reasonably cheap.
Recent investigation by forum members seems to show that the CW80 waveform is not sinusoidal even at full output. It appears to use a 20-volt transformer but puts out just 18 volts at most. The triac firing appears to be delayed somewhat to leave room to unbalance it to implement the whistle and bell control.
Chuck…I’m not sure Lionel is manufacturing the 135 watt brick anymore. It wasn’t listed in the latest catalog and I think it was missing before then. BTW, I have a TPC driven by two 180 watt bricks and it has been great, after I purchased the correct connecting cables to run the TMCC. [:D]
Would a old post war zw be okay has anyone ran them with those?
My initial attempts at using a TPC 400 were powered by a CW80. These two pieces of equipment do not work well together! Before I got a powerhouse brick type ower supply, I was able to get good results with the TPC 400 by powering it with a postwar 1033 transformer. The ZW should work well.
Lionelsoni is correct about the wave form difference between the CW 80 and a postwar transformer. I put an ossicaliscope on the CW 80 and the 1033 and discovered that the 1033 (and presumably all of the postwar transformers) had a close to perfect sine wave output, while the CW80’s output was a fragmented sine wave.
You will want to install a circuit breaker between the TPC and whatever postwar transformer you use to power it. Place some transient voltage supressors in the circuit too to protect the electronice in the TPC from voltage spikes.
Good luck.
I ran a TPC 300 off of a postwar ZW and plan to run my new TPC I’m getting ( sold the last one like an idiot) off of one of my 2 ZW’s
You should use circuit protection between the ZW and the TPC, the breakers in the ZW are NOT sufficient to protect the TPC circuitry.
What the best circut breaker for the job? between the zw and tpc? lionels grey house one or diffrent?