Power Distribution Block for Lighting

[tcf511]

I asked a set of vague questions about lighting recently that weren't giving anyone much opportunity to help me. I've done more research. On page 840 of the Walthers catalog a company called Miniatronics has a power distribution block rated at 15 amps. I would like to set up a separate bus for lighting buildings, street lights, etc and then control it off the DC of an MRC twin pack controller. I have DCC for the trains themselves on a separate bus. In order to avoid soldering each individual lighting wire to the bus, I was wondering if I can use these power distribution blocks in order to have fewer bus connections. I'm going to have 50 buildings or more on my layout, most of them lighted and am trying to avoid a thousand connections to the bus. Any advice would be appreciated.

[rrinker]

Well, you can;t get around having to attach each building's lights to the power bus. The idea of a distribution block is to run one set of wires from your power supply to a common point, like the center of an industrial complex, and use the block to break out into wires to each building - sure beats running wires from the panel all the way to each building. You can do structure lighting the same way as a DCC power bus too, distribution blocks not needed - just run a bus line near all your structures and tie into it, just like the track bus and track feeders. Although for better effects it's good to have multiple circuits each with their own switch so all the lights in all the buildings don't just come on at the same time. Even better in something like a house if you put different lights int he same structure - upstairs and downstairs. THen in early evening, you turn on the downstairs lights. Later the downstairs lights go off and the upstairs ones coe on. Morning, just the reverse. Not required, but it does make for a neat effect.

--Randy

[MisterBeasley]

I would get simple "terminal blocks" from an electrical supply place. For example, Ocean State Electronics (www.oselectronics.com) has a 6-position terminal block for $2.48. The web site has pictures for anyone not familiar with the terminology. With two of them and a few minutes of jumper-wiring, you will have basically the same 12-terminal screw connection block. They go up to a 12-position block, which you could jumper half-and-half for the same effect. The same place has terminal strips for even less, but these require soldering. Radio Shack has a 4-pack of 5-lug terminal strips for a buck and a half.

Oh, and you know how you hate spending 55 cents at the hardware store for one 2/56 screw for a Kadee coupler installation? This place has them in bags of a hundred for $3.50.

[Seamonster]

Good advice from Randy. [#ditto] Something else to consider is how much load 50 buildings of lights will have on a power pack. Looking at the Circuitron lamps in the Walthers catalogue, and ignoring the high output lamps, the lamps listed draw anywhere from 13 to 75 milliamps. The average power pack can supply about 2 or 3 amps. Depending on which lamps you used, that wouldn't be nearly enough power and would overload the power pack. You'd have to use 12 volt bulbs because your chances of setting and keeping the throttle of a power pack down at 1.5 or 3 volts for those lamps would not be good and they'd pop like popcorn if the voltage changed.

As Randy suggested, you should divide up your lighting into a number of circuits, not only so that everything doesn't come on all at once, but so that you can use more than one power source to handle the load. You could have from 1 to 4 or 5 lamps in cach building and if you were using miniature 12 volt lamps with, say, an average comsumption of 50 milliamps, that could conceivably add up to around 10 amps!

The Miniatronics distribution block is just a couple of heavy duty terminal strips mounted on a PC board with all the terminals in each strip conntected together. Personally, I'd just buy a couple of terminal strips, join the terminals together and screw them to a board, but then I don't like to buy anything I can make myself. This item has it all done for you in one neat package and would work for you when placed where a cluster of lamps can come together as Randy suggested.

On my own N scale layout I've got a small town (it will get bigger sometime!) and all the buildings have lighting in them, most of them have multiple lamps in different rooms and different floors and even porch lights. I've got a control panel just for lighting, with a half-dozen different circuits. 4 of them have electronic timers to make the lights go on and off at different intervals. One circuit is just for street lighting which hasn't been installed yet. The whole thing is powered by a high-amperage 12 volt power supply.

[tsasala]

Maybe I'm missing something 50 lamps x 50mA/lamp = 2500 mA = 2.5 amps.

[Seamonster]

Times 4 or 5 lamps in each building = around 10 amps. If he puts just one lamp in each building, then it would be only 2.5 amps. If he gets carried away like me and puts multiple lamps in each building, it could be a lot more.

[tcf511]

Thanks for the replies. I'm definitely going to segregate the lighting in multiple sections. With all of the low cos power packs out there right now, I won't try to shortcut there.

[tsasala]

ah, gottcha