I just checked the paperwork for the tortoises and they draw around 15 ma each and I have eleven of them. I should be ok, but I like your idea of installing a breaker. Right now I have the comand wires running about one foot long to a terminal connecting to the main buss #12 wire. I tapped into the #12 wires a couple of inches past that terminal strip and ran #18 wire to two terminal strips with six screws each then will feed all 11 switches from here. Also, about six inches past that tie-in to the main buss line, I tapped into the main again to power the turntable track. Then every three feet on the layout track I put #18 drops from the track to the buss. (Hundreds of solder joints). A PSX-AR board from Tony’s trains handles the double reverse loop yard area.
It will take a LOT of Tortoises before you need to worry about overlaoding a 5 amp system. At 15ma each, it takes 100 of them to draw 1.5 amps.
That said, it WOULD be better to have some alternative way of powering them, by at least adding a circuit breaker for the track and pulling a bus line for the stationary decoders out before the breakers, that way a track short won;t stop you from throwing a tuirnout, which is usually what caused the short int he first palce - running into a switch set against you. Or hook up one of the cheap Tam Valley boosters and use that to power the stationary decoders while the main output goes only to the track.
–Randy
Thanks for the tip on the Tam Valley booster, Randy, and thanks to all for this thread. As it happens, I just bench-tested my first stationary decoder last night, a Switch-It that will drive Tortoises at the carfloat terminal.
Knowing more than I did a week ago just makes the whole job much easier.