MRC voltage reducer

[Truck]

    HI Everyone,  I just bought the MRC voltage reducer for my N scale part of my layout.

I have both HO & N scale on my layout. My DCC system is a Prodigy advanced squared2. The voltage reducer connects in series to one rail from the track power supply on the power pack. I do not want to drop voltage on the the HO part of the layout, so my question is if I run a bus line from the HO bus line to the N scale part of layout and run the reducer from there would it work with out affecting the HO part of the layout?    The only reason I am doing this is because Athernn recomends it for the N scale Challenger.The expensive one with noise. And Digitrax recommends it also if you put some of thier decoders in N scale loco's. I do not know why because their decodes fit Ho scale also but no voltage drop is recommended . but if you put it in N scale it is.

[jwils1]

    HI Everyone,  I just bought the MRC voltage reducer for my N scale part of my layout.

I have both HO & N scale on my layout. My DCC system is a Prodigy advanced squared2. The voltage reducer connects in series to one rail from the track power supply on the power pack. I do not want to drop voltage on the the HO part of the layout, so my question is if I run a bus line from the HO bus line to the N scale part of layout and run the reducer from there would it work with out affecting the HO part of the layout?    The only reason I am doing this is because Athernn recomends it for the N scale Challenger.The expensive one with noise. And Digitrax recommends it also if you put some of thier decoders in N scale loco's. I do not know why because their decodes fit Ho scale also but no voltage drop is recommended . but if you put it in N scale it is.

Truck:

I have a similar setup to yours.  At first I used the MRC voltage reducer on just the N scale layout but it reduces voltage by 4V.  This would take the PA2, or the Wireless which I'm using, 14.5V track voltage down to about 10.5V.  At this voltage I wasn't getting very good performance from some locos.  Since Digitrax recommends 12V for their N scale decoders, I decided to modify the reducer to let it only drop by 2V.

MRC suggested that I solder a wire to one of the diode wires in the middle of the reducer and and not use the wire that comes with the reducer on the end where the diodes are not used.  This effectively uses only six of the twelve diodes.  This did reduce voltage by 2V.

I decided to go ahead and use this arrangement for both my N and HO scale layouts since the Digitrax Zephyr puts out about 12V and they recommend it for both scales, and others say to use the lowest voltage that works for your equipment.

 

[Truck]

   Thanks,  That makes good sense .