Background: I have started construction of a new HO gauge layout. The layout will be three levels (mushroom design) and the overall size is 28ft x 32ft. I will be using a Digitrax DCS100 command station and 3 or 4 DB150 boosters for DCC control. Each level will be it's own booster district and the main division yard will be its own booster district.
I plan to install a BDL168 for occupancy detection/status in each of the lower and upper return loop/staging and in the double helix.
There will be approximately 100 turnouts controlled by Tortoises and NCE SwitchIt mk2/Switch8 mk2 (and several Wabbits).
I plan to run 12ga cable (speaker wire) for DCC track power/control bus driven by the DCS100 and multiple DB150s for each track power district. What should my goal be for maximum length of the DCC track power/control bus cables? (5amp boosters and 12ga bus cable).
I also plan to run 12ga cables for turnout control/power driven by a DB150 for all ~100 turnouts. Is this a good idea in order to avoid track shorts from shutting down turnout control? Can a single DB150 power 100 tortoises?
I do not plan to implement a signalling system at this point.
While I'm running bus cables, are there any other (home run) bus cables I should consider adding?
PS: I plan to use 5 meter 5630 LED tape lights for layout lighting (either single or double run). Any recommendations on how to wire/power about 400 (or 800 if doubled) linear feet of LED lighting? Or should I start a different message thread on that question?
Modeling an HO gauge freelance version of the Union Pacific Oregon Short Line and the Utah Railway around 1957 in a world where Pirates from the Great Salt Lake founded Ogden, UT.
- Photo album of layout construction -
Figure 25 feet in either direction for a #12 bus. So you can have 50 feet if the DB150 connects in the middle. 25 feet out and back is 50 feet total in the circuit, so this will keep you well within reasonable voltage drops. For the detection areas, locate the BDL-168 near the detection zones and run the heavy wire to it, and the 16 runs then locally to the detected sections - a LOT less wire than running 16 long runs of wire, one from each BLD-168 section.
You will also one a single conductor wire of the same size for the ground connection between each booster.
One DB-150 is plenty of power for 100 Tortoises and their stationary decoders. 100 Tortoises will draw about 1.5 amps. Have a dedicated supply for the stationary decoders is a good idea.
The LED tape lights should come with specifications on how many you can link together. It's not a lot before you need to use another power supply, depending on the lengths of the reels. The limit is the current capacity of the through traces on the tape. Eventually it would just cause too much voltage drop, so you hook maybe 2 reels together and then you need a fresh power input for the next two, and so on. The specs should indicate this so you know for sure.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Onewolfthe overall size is 28ft x 32ft
With these dimensions, you may find that a booster per wall works better than a booster per level.
OnewolfWhat should my goal be for maximum length of the DCC track power/control bus cables?
This is dependant on how many locos you have operating in the district and how many amps they draw. There is no fixed number. Sound increases your requirement signicicantly. 12-15 sound equipped locos in an engine terminal will require shorter bus wires than a single track mainline.
Read this:
http://www.wiringfordcc.com/trakwire.htm
OnewolfI plan to install a BDL168 for occupancy detection/status in each of the lower and upper return loop/staging and in the double helix.
If you haven't bought these yet, take a look at the RR-Cirkits or other coil based detectors. They don't cause a voltage drop which will be bothersome if you're not doing detection everywhere.
I have the right to remain silent. By posting here I have given up that right and accept that anything I say can and will be used as evidence to critique me.
Yes, definitey coil detectors. Diode drop detectors are so 1950's (same concept as the Twin-T). No voltage drop, and you can locate the actual detector at the track being detected, with the controller board some distance away, they just use twisted pair cable (like take a pair from some Ethernet cable) to link the coil back to the controller board. Yo would have the main bus feed coem in for your staging yard, to a terminal strip, and then break out into one sub-bus per track, and place the coil over one of the wires connecting the main bus to said sub-bus. Each track gapped at the turnout - boom, each staging track has detection. And no change of speed crossing the gap out of the yard, which there would be with a BDL-168.
No need to worry mixing Digitax and non-Digitrax, the RR-CirKits Loconet devices are fully certified. The only DIgitrax things on my layout are the command station, booster, and throttles. I'll probably keep using PM-42s, the Loconet feedback and control and the fact that I've had no issues with them resetting even with multipel sound locos in the same section trump any advantages a solid state device would have.
I would run multiple accessory power bus lines. I have one set (in general) for structure lighting and one for street lamps. My street lamps are Walthers Cornerstone. They do not have replaceable bulbs, so I like to be able to shut them off to conserve their lifetimes. I generally use a 12-volt DC accessory bus and the lamps themselves are 16 volt. This both gives me a warmer glow (Transition Era) and further extends bulb life. I have toggle switches spread around on control panels to turn the various bus lines on and off.
Consider how you really want to operate your turnouts. Most of mine are simple control-panel toggles. I wanted to try DCC-operated turnouts at one point, and I have a half-dozen of those, too. However, because you must remember the address and relinquish control of a train to flip a turnout, I don't think of them as ideal. For that reason, if you are going to use DCC to control your turnouts, make sure you get stationary decoders that let you also add toggle control if you want that later. The ones I have do not have this feature, and I realize now that I made a mistake in going for the low-cost alternatives.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Beese of LION
1) COMMON HARD GROUND, grounded to the building system. No flaoting common, that would gather stray voltages that will drive you crazy.
2) 600 volt DC Third Rail (Power Bus) --- Ok, so it is only 10.2 volts, and will soon be dropped down to 8 volts or less as I install new motors on all of my equipment.
OK, you are nut using System der LION... but you need two DCC Beese in place of this. (Left Rail of LION (in direction of travel) is GROUND -- Right Rail is powered by the 600 volt Bus)
3) 16V DC Signal and Automation Bus. Used by reed switched to detect the passing of a train (with a magnet on the bottom) [So 1940s eh?]. These detectors enervate the relays that supply power and logic to the signals and automation relays.
4) +12v DC: The HOTEL Bus. Very important, it provides power to all of the accessories, street lighting, station lighting, building lighting etc. It is actually part of a pair of circuits supplying my GRS interlocking machine.
This consists of two 12 transformers with rectifiers arranged +12v -- GROUND -- -12. The -12v DC holds the tortoises in their normal position (lever in) while the +12v DC reverses the tortoises (lever out).
LION is very fond of his GRS interlocking machine, and whould not ever hear of DCC switch and signal operations. The head of him hurts even thinking about it. Since LION does not operate trains (them is auotmatic) him runs instead the RAILROAD from this interlocking tower.
BEYOND THE BEESE...
LION knows knot about DCC control of switches. Obviously wiring is easier, but him has MANY 25 pair Cat 3 telephone cables from the main control panel to points around the layout. There are many 25 point pin out panels around the layout, him can connect any device, mostly signals, automation and switch machines with the conductors provided by these cables.
PUT THE DARN CABLES WHERE YOU CAN REACH THEM WITHOUT CLIMBING UNDER OR OVER THE LAYOUT.
LION likes to put them on the fascia, and then using stand-offs apply a finished fascia over that. Gotta have the wires where you can reach them, NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT!
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
rrinker Yes, definitey coil detectors. Diode drop detectors are so 1950's (same concept as the Twin-T). No voltage drop, and you can locate the actual detector at the track being detected, with the controller board some distance away, they just use twisted pair cable (like take a pair from some Ethernet cable) to link the coil back to the controller board. Yo would have the main bus feed coem in for your staging yard, to a terminal strip, and then break out into one sub-bus per track, and place the coil over one of the wires connecting the main bus to said sub-bus. Each track gapped at the turnout - boom, each staging track has detection. And no change of speed crossing the gap out of the yard, which there would be with a BDL-168. No need to worry mixing Digitax and non-Digitrax, the RR-CirKits Loconet devices are fully certified. The only DIgitrax things on my layout are the command station, booster, and throttles. I'll probably keep using PM-42s, the Loconet feedback and control and the fact that I've had no issues with them resetting even with multipel sound locos in the same section trump any advantages a solid state device would have. --Randy
As far as occupancy detection I just want a fascia LED status light to indicate when a zone is occupied. Looking at the RR-Cirkits BOD-8 it looks like the output goes low when a "train is detected" and the expectation is the BOD-8 will be used in conjunction with their TC-64 device to interface with Loconet. This is not the behavior I want and I don't care about loconet integration?
MisterBeasley I would run multiple accessory power bus lines. I have one set (in general) for structure lighting and one for street lamps. My street lamps are Walthers Cornerstone. They do not have replaceable bulbs, so I like to be able to shut them off to conserve their lifetimes. I generally use a 12-volt DC accessory bus and the lamps themselves are 16 volt. This both gives me a warmer glow (Transition Era) and further extends bulb life. I have toggle switches spread around on control panels to turn the various bus lines on and off. Consider how you really want to operate your turnouts. Most of mine are simple control-panel toggles. I wanted to try DCC-operated turnouts at one point, and I have a half-dozen of those, too. However, because you must remember the address and relinquish control of a train to flip a turnout, I don't think of them as ideal. For that reason, if you are going to use DCC to control your turnouts, make sure you get stationary decoders that let you also add toggle control if you want that later. The ones I have do not have this feature, and I realize now that I made a mistake in going for the low-cost alternatives.
It's an open collectors output. You just hook the negative side of the LED to the 'output' like a decoder function. Plus side of the LED to the 5V supply via appropriate resistor. You can also make your own, the circuit is on Rob Paisley's RR Electronics page. And there is also the Team Digital DBD22 and the NCE BD20. Or Chubb's DCCOD.
It's really no different than the BDL-168, you connect LEDs to the pins that are used for the test indicator that comes with them. The part that is in the TC-64 (basically, the interface between the sensor and Loconet) is already in the BDL-168, and since you say you aren't interested in Loconet integration, you've got a bunch of stuff you're paying for but not using. The BOS-8 and others I listed are purely detectors, that CAN be connected to devices to interface to Loconet, or simply connected to LEDs that light up when the block is occupied.
For turnouts, consider servos. Tam Valley has several controllers that have both fascia mount controls AND are DCC decoders so you can do both. That's the way I do mine. I don't ever operate them from the throttle, it's way too tedious, no matter what system you have. But I DO use the DCC stationary decoder funtion to operate the turnouts from a JMRI panel. So I can just run trains and walk around pushing the buttons to throw the switches, or I can have a dispatcher sitting at a panel control the mainline turnouts. The Quad-LN board, while the most expensive, has a nifty feature to help with this, via a command sent to it, it can disable or enable the local buttons. So when using a dispatcher, the local buttons can be turned off so crews can't 'cheat', and in the case where local control is desired for switching moves, the dispatcher can enable local control for a crew working a particular siding.
Would/Should the turnout control DCC bus also be limited to the 25' length? There's no way I can locate a single booster that would be within 30' of all the turnouts.
It doesn't. The current draw, even of 100 Tortoises, is only 1.5 amps, so if you calcualte maximum voltage drop on #12 with a total load of 1.5 amps, it's a long ditance to get even 2 volts of drop, which will still be fine for a Tortoise. What some people forget is that voltage drop is proportional to current draw. So if you have a circuit breaker set at 3 amps feeding a bus line and then figure the voltage drop based on 5 amps, you aren't doing it right. If you calculate a 2 volt drop at 5 amps, but have a maximum load of half that, the voltage drop will only be 1 volt.
So here's my initial plan for DCC track booster district bus wiring schema. It will require 4 boosters for the track power/control (+1 for turnout control).
Boosters 1 and 2 will both control parts of the lower and middle levels. Booster 3 will control the upper level and helix. Booster 4 will control the main yard.
The lower level and main yard booster and bus cable routing. The main yard will have a dedicated booster. The main yard power district is the orange and the rest of the lower level is the red.
The middle level and helix
The upper level
There will be auto-reversing circuit breakers for the lower and upper return loops and I will attempt to break up the rest of the booster districts into logical circuit breaker zones.
I have decided that initially I will simply have a PSX-AR circuit breaker for each track bus cable run.
Booster 1 (DCS-100) will have a PSX4 for the 4 bus cables it drives.
Booster 2 with have a PSX4 for the 4 bus cables it drives.
Booster 3 will have a PSX3 for the 3 bus cables it drives.
Booster 4 will have a PSX2 for the 2 bus cables it drives.
Plus two PSX-AR for the lower and upper return/reverse loops.
Ching$ Ching$, There's another $550.
Next question, would it be advisable to mount dedicated RRampMeters for each of the track power boosters too keep an eye on AMPs being output/consumed by each?
Onewolf Next question, would it be advisable to mount dedicated RRampMeters for each of the track power boosters too keep an eye on AMPs being output/consumed by each?
Alton Junction
OnewolfNext question, would it be advisable to mount dedicated RRampMeters for each of the track power boosters too keep an eye on AMPs being output/consumed by each?
For a differing opinion, I don't think that is necessary. Sounds like an unneeded expense to me. If you have some reason to be concerned about the amp draw, I'd rig up an arrangement where I could insert the meter in series if I needed to, but just use a jumper otherwise. I'm not certain what knowing the amp draw on a continual basis would be useful for.
ALl those meters would LOOK cool, but I really don't think it's necessary. Simply connect each booster using some sort of 2 pin connection, like a PowerPole, and make up matching short pigtails and use just one rrampmeter as needed. I have yet to buy one, no need. If the breaker trips - I have too many locos. Voltage, exact voltage is pretty much not all that important, what matters is that each power district has the same voltage. I just use a plain cheap meter to read voltage. If it's 10% low because the meter can;t handle the DCC waveform perfectly, it's going to be 10% low everywhere, so I can see that oen side of a gap is 12V and the other is 10V and correct it.
Rob Paisley has a circuit on his site the replicates what's in teh rrampmeter to get proper amps on the DCC waveform, it's only a couple of bucks, combine with a cheap (about $5 on ebay) panel meter and you can probably monitor 20 power districts for the cost of 2 rrampmeters.
rrinker ALl those meters would LOOK cool, but I really don't think it's necessary.
ALl those meters would LOOK cool, but I really don't think it's necessary.
Rich
That's why I'll probably build up some of Rob's circuit and get some of those cheap panel meters at the same time I order some LEDs from the same Chinese sources on eBay.
Oh yes, something else to consider - buy one more booster than you were planning, and leave the DCS100 connected to NOTHING on the track outputs. Doing this has made out club layout much more reliable. Make the DCS100 a command station that powers nothing. No potential feedback with noise on the track power lines will reduce the chances of it getting its brain scrambled in the middle of an operating session. I even ran my old layout that way, witht eh Zephyr command station doing nothing and all track powered from the DB150.
If you have multiple throttles, use one for controlling the trains and another for the stationhary decoders, That way you don't have to give up control of your train.
Jay
C-415 Build: https://imageshack.com/a/tShC/1
Other builds: https://imageshack.com/my/albums
modelmaker51 If you have multiple throttles, use one for controlling the trains and another for the stationhary decoders, That way you don't have to give up control of your train.
99% of the time I will be using the fascia turnout control toggle switches (and routing status LED) to control turnouts.
I have 4 power districts and 4 RRamp meters each monitoring a cable run of about 50ft of 14 gauge speaker wire buses. In use are 4 Tam Valley boosters each feeding a PSX-1. I've had problems with multiple PSX connected to either the Tam Valley or DB150's or LZV100's as a boosters. The booster trips 50% of the time with the PSX defeating the entire theory of multiple circuit breakers. The price of a Tam Valley booster is about the same as a PSX so the PSX falls out in future versions.
I also have another Tam Valley (fifth unit) to power the accessory bus. All five Tam Valley's are powered by a Digitrax PS2012. Not so remarkably, all the track voltages are the same. My DCC command station is an LZV100.
For the 48 current detectors, I use the Torrid detectors (CTI-Electronics) and the sensor wires are all Cat5 twisted pairs. The 20 torti, hare and wabbit decoders provide control.
Are those RRampMeters showing 17+- Volts? What gauge are you running?
Tam Valley boosters output based on power supply, they should be around 15V with the suggested power supply. Lenz booster are as well, and their standard power supply results in too high a track voltage. I actually have my DB150 set to N scale, because 12V is plenty.
As for mutliple PSX not working, this should not be the case unless you have multiple high resistence shorts in different PSX zones such that teh current draw is not enough to trigger the PSX but the combined total current exceeds the 5 amps of the booster. Or just if you create multiple districts and have enough load total in them - if you have 4 PSX sections running off one bosoter, and each section has 2 amps of load in it, the PSX won't trip, but 4x2 amps is 8 amps and the booster will trip.
rrinkerf you have 4 PSX sections running off one bosoter, and each section has 2 amps of load in it, the PSX won't trip, but 4x2 amps is 8 amps and the booster will trip.
Randy, as you explained, running 2, 3 or 4 PSX behind one booster is unpredictable power management. On my model railroad, the loads change dynamically as trains move about making the cumulative load on the booster unpredictable.
My layout runs at 13 volts, I run the PS2012 at the N scale range for my HO layout. I have an average 1/2 volt drop across the railroad. All sections pass the quarter test.