novice with a wiring question

[basement artie]

Hi.  I'm new to layout building, and I would like to know how to wire a series of 4 MTH large scale floodlight  towers to a Lionel accessory transformer.  Are there any forums or resources out there to address this and other novice wiring questions?  Thank you.

[wrmcclellan]

basement artie,

You have come to the right place assuming you are talking about the MTH Tinplate Std Gauge #92 floodlight tower (MTH PN 10-1044). I searched my MTH Railking Gauge One catalogs and did not find a large scale (G gauge) floodlight tower accessory. Regardless - Welcome to the CTT Forum .

If this response does not help you if your question is G Gauge related, you may wish to go over to the Garden Railways forum.

MTH and Lionel accessories typically operate from the same voltage range AC supply voltages (6 - 18 VAC), so you can typically mix and match Lionel and MTH transformers which may be answering your basic question. The exception may be any MTH DC powered large scale accessories which as I stated earlier I am not aware. If not, then read further. If the additional explanation below is too basic, please let me know.

I do not have the towers you refer to, but most lighting only accessories have two terminals (binding posts or clips). Thus you merely wire from the two accessory posts on the transformer to the two terminals on the lighting accessory. It does not normally matter which terminal of  the accessory is connected (there are a few exceptions) to which post on the tramsformer.

Since you have several towers, in this case I recommend you wire the floodlight towers in a parallel configuration.

Here is a link with a couple of good pictorials explaining series vs parallel wiring.

http://www.berkeleypoint.com/learning/parallel_circuit.html

Parallel wiring will allow the same voltage from the transformer accessory output to be applied to each floodlight tower, but the current required for each floodlight will add to the transformer load. Depending on the transfomer you have, you will need to be careful not to exceed it's amperage capacity. One can assume about 0.1 ampere (but could be as high as 0.2A) for each bulb in the floodlight towers. The MTH tinplate towers have 2 bulbs each, so each tower may draw approximately 0.2 ampere each (2 x 0.1A). Thus 4 towers may draw 4 x 0.2A = 0.8 ampere. A Lionel 40 watt accessory transformer can supply about 2 amperes continuously and thus could power about 10 MTH tinplate floodlight towers.

Series wiring will split the voltage available from the transformer across the 4 towers. As the MTH towers are likely designed for approx 16 volt operation and toy train transformers are designed to put out about 6 - 18 vac, if you were to wire the towers in series, the light output will be quite dim (in an ideal world - if I set the transformer at 16 VAC, 4 towers would each take about 4 VAC - [(16 VAC)/4 = 4 VAC]). Try this for yourself as an experiment if you wish. It will not harm anything.  

You may have some additional questions so do not hesitate to ask.

 

[basement artie]

Roy

Wow!  Thank you so much for the detailed reply.  I'm looking forward to wiring these towers(they are in fact the 92s) tonight as per your suggestion.  I also look forward to sharing this woderful hobby with yourself and others in the forum.  Again, many thanks.

Tom