Starting construction of my railroad. Dogbone with about 60' of track on the 2 track main with staging yards at both loops. Concept is a division point with half under catenary and half steam and dirsel. Three switching districts and an engine terminal. Base station for dcc and dispatcher will be at the midpoint making 30' the longest distance for connection to dcc base. Do I need snubbers on that length? Do I divide the main into two districts? What about the switching districts, engine terminal and staging loops? I forsee possibly as many as 10 districts if I make each area a unique district. Is that overkill? Using NCE wireless control. Thank you
ndbprr Starting construction of my railroad. Dogbone with about 60' of track on the 2 track main with staging yards at both loops. Concept is a division point with half under catenary and half steam and dirsel. Three switching districts and an engine terminal. Base station for dcc and dispatcher will be at the midpoint making 30' the longest distance for connection to dcc base. Do I need snubbers on that length? Do I divide the main into two districts? What about the switching districts, engine terminal and staging loops? I forsee possibly as many as 10 districts if I make each area a unique district. Is that overkill? Using NCE wireless control. Thank you
My initial question is, will there be reversing sections as part of this dogbone? If there are crossovers between the mainlines, reversing sections are likely.
Do you need snubbers? For years, I did without them. Then, when snubbers seemed to become all the rage on an NCE-DCC forum, I installed them and noticed no difference in performance. So, on my new layout, I did not include snubbers.
My layout is a dogbone for all practical purposes, measuring 45' x 40' in an an L-shape. My command station is in the middle, so all buses are under 50'.
I have a total of 7 power districts, 3 of which are controlled by PSX circuit breakers and 4 which are controlled by PSX-AR circuit breaker/reverser units. Since my double mainline is connected by crossovers in the middle of the layout, each mailine is isolated at either end by a PSX-AR.
The other 3 power districts are controlled by PSX circuit breakers for a large passenger station, an engine servicing facility and the non-reversing portion of the double mainline. I have a coach yard and a freight yard which currently are part of the power district controlling the non-reversing portion of the double mainline.
So, are your proposed 10 power districts too many? Not really, especially since you also have two staging yards.
From what you described, I don't see any need for a second booster.
Do you have a track plan that you can post?
Rich
Alton Junction
My layout is similar. I have 4 PSX breakers plus two reverse sections managed by old PS-REV auto-reversers.
Originally I has just the reversers, but as my layout grew I first wired it with separate track buses for the new sections, so adding breakers later was easy.
My layout is about 100 square feet. To be honest, I think I would do just as well with a couple of fewer breakers. At most, I run two continuous loop trains and some switching. If I had thought about breakers earlier, I would not have wired the basically separate subway lines to the same bus as the early surface tracks.
One advantage of breakers is load spreading. You can run a whole large layout on a big 8-amp booster, but that would potentially allow all those 8 amps to flow through a single short. Or you can limit your breakers to 2 amps and reduce that danger. Two amps might be insufficient, so analyze your requirements and operational plans carefully.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.