I had three business trips in June on consecutive weeks starting June 8. The fourth consecutive week was travel for our vacation. On the 16th I traveled to a site in the San Francisco Bay Area (Fremont), California. I worked at that facility and got to visit the Train Shop in Santa Clara and Just Trains in Concord, both old haunts.
That night I got a call from my wife that lightning struck our house. Turns out it struck at some unknown location between our house and our neighbors (they thought it struck theirs, too). Half the circuit breakers popped, but we have a lightning arrestor on the main and a whole house surge suppressor in the panel box, plus pretty major league surge suppression on the TVs, stereo, computers, printers, and anything else electronic, including the model railroad.
Sounds okay, but no. The surge came in through the power, cable, and phone lines (based on my troubleshooting). The power surge wa
That is a major bummer. I’ve always been a fan of good ol’ ethernet, even as wireless stuff proliferated. The wife likes wireless, though, and we’ve gradually been moving in that direction. My JMRI box is wireless, although gets 110v through the usual laptop power supply. Fortunately, the house has a surge protector under the meter, so protects the whole mess. No copper-line phone since we went VOIP, we cut the cable line when the fiber broadband went in and it’s underground to boot.
If I didn’t have all the antennas from another hobby, radio monitoring, I’d actually feel pretty good about how I’m set up.[(-D]
Then again, a direct hit will leave nature laughing in your face over such puny prep.
That’s a shame. All that equipment fried. I hope no one was injured.
Lighting does not have to directly hit an electrical device to trash it. Comming close to the power line is enough to fry all your equipment. What you did’t mentioned is the ‘grounding’ of your service. All electricity tries to go to ground. All electricity takes the path of least resistance. A properly grounded system is your first line of defense for power surges, including lighting. A properly grounded system gives the electrical surge an unimpeded path to ground, bypassing all your surge suppressors and equipment. That’s how lighting rods work. They give the lighting an easy path to ground rather than through a building. You should have a ground rod out side connected to your electrical panel. The ground rod should be at least 2’ from the house. Any closer and it is not properly grounding your service. You might need more than one ground rod depending on your soil.
meihman: if your antennae mast are properly grounded, they make excellant lighting rods. My dad was a HAM operator and had a 60’ mast for his antennae. On two occasions we witnessed his antennae taking a direct lighting hit. There was no damage to his antennae or equipment.
The irony is the electrical system is grounded well. I was pretty happy with the way it performed. The cable service, apparently not so much. The more I troubleshoot, the more that appears to be the point of entry where most of the major damage occurred. Its status in terms of being grounded is about to change. I’ll be putting a lightning/surge arrestor that goes to the electrical ground on the cable point of entry into the house. Our cable signal is strong enough that they had to weaken it for the cable modem to work correctly.
My last “hit” took out one TV, the phone, the modem, a UPS on the layout computer, the printer on said computer, SE8C, the command station, a PR3, and various other items.
My problem was it went through the UPS, to computer, then out the serial port to printer, and through the USB ports, to the PR3, then through that to the daisy-chained Zephyr, and SE8C.
Lesson learned was to always disconnect layout connection on the computer when not in use. And, I always unplug the power supply on layout when not in use.
Sounds all too familiar. A couple of years ago just before Christmas, lightning struck our neighbor’s tree, arced across two others to ground out through the Christmas lights on our gutter (there was wn arc-weld spot on the metal gutter at the point of entry). Apparently it fed through the electrical system and cable system and fried our landline phone base, the cable modem, and the older tube-type TV in the bedroom. Everything else escaped unscathed.
Fast forward to about April, 2014. My club took a lightning strike that apparently went through the electrical system as well, but arced from the overhead lights to the UR92 mounted at the top of the mountain in the middle of the building. Of course then it fed through the Loconet cables to fry the PM42s, LocoBuffer, and sent just enough through the DCS200 to cause it to start glitching, but not enough to completely fry it.
or get an opto-isolated Locobuffer USB. In my case though the computer and DCC system are on the same surge protector and it wouldn’t make much difference.
A quick update and a pat on the back as a result. I got a package from Digitrax today that included a repaired DCS100, SE8C, and BDL162, plus a DT300 I included that was not working prior to the lightning strike. While I have not had a chance to test them yet, the descriptions of what was done is logical given the problems. The whole shebang, including the throttle, cost me $100. Given that is the going rate for an SE8C, I’ll take it.
A hearty thank you to Digitrax. I expected at least the SE8C or BDL162 to not be repairable. That was about the only “pleasant surprise” from sweeping up the ashes of the lightning strike.