OK, you guys brought it up, so here's what I'm working on. I've got a monster power supply. It makes available 400 Amps at 24 volts DC. It was designed for an arc bulb theater projector. It has a rheostat to control output voltage and the AC can be tapped in front of the rectifier. Talk about welding! This is not 400 watts. It's 400 amps. At 24 volts, that's 9600 watts. Tuned down to 18 volts, it's more like 7200 watts, or 29 Lionel ZW's.
My plan is to section the layout into blocks, each regulated by a 10 amp fuse or breaker. That will make the available power, in each block, 180 watts, prior to protection kicking in. Essentially, I am duplicating the type of power distribution used by utilities. I can make certain industries a power block. Building lighting is a power block. Accessories can be divided among blocks. And no more than a few feet of track will be under a single block control at one time. Even though trains can move independently throughout the layout, under the power of a single source, they will nonetheless pass from power block to power block, protected from any serious melt-down power. Control of the trains, exerted through a centralized system, will pass through the main power supply and permeate all power blocks at once, so that, no matter where a train is on the layout, it is under a single cab command control. Pray for me. Chris Zizzo S-Trains list sponsor: http://www.americanflyertrains.com All the Flyer you desire...books and accessories too! To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list send a note to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
