As many of you recommended, I am going to divide my new DCC layout into power districts. I have an MRC Prodigy Advance. Can I use any brand of power booster to divide my layout or do I have to stay with MRC? Any disadvantage to use maybe an NCE or Digitrax?
I am not sure about the other brands, but you will not be able to use Digitrax. In the Digitrax system there is no Power Booster, but two seperate devices. The Command Station/Booster provide the DCC signal. You attach a Power Supply (usualy 5 AMPS) to each Booster to provide electrical power to the layout.
You can sub-divide a Command Station/Booster with a power supply into sub-power districts by purchasing a power manager device, or use an automotive tail light to accomplish the same thing. Using the tail light has been discussed in other threads on this forum.
JIM
Unfortunately you cannot use an NCE or Digitrax or any other DCC system booster except the MRC. These systems are uniquely different from each other therefore, they require their own equipment for expansion.
You can use different power supplies to hook up to the power boosters but cannot use different boosters.
Bill
Not totally true. You cna feed the track power in to a booster with optoisolators. That’s how MRC’s 8-amp booster works. The CVP booster 5 and Booster 10 can be used like this, and Digitrax will make optoisolated versions of the DB150 and DB200 as special order items (somewhere I saw that all new DB200’s were going to have the optoisolators standard from now on, dunno if this is true or not). The wires would go from the existing command station/booster to the extra booster’s inputs, and also to the power district it controls via a circuit breaker - important to have the breaker, otherwise a short will shut down the input signal to the extra booster(s) and stop the whole railroad.
–Randy
Yep, the DB200 I bought a few weeks ago from Tony’s had the optoisolator.
Jeff