Hey all,
Was curious as to how you supply your power for lighting accessories such as light poles, building lights, street signals , etc. I have read not to use power from the track power buss for this and I was thinking of using a DC power pack I have using the accessory terminal off of it. My layout is going to be 10x11 feet. Will that be enough power? Should I do something different? My trains run off DCC, just a FYI.
Thanks, Del
Del:
I use old blue box power packs. One with a capicator discharge circuit for throwing multiple peco under table at once. The second one powers Atlas turnouts and LEDs inside buildings.
Check the output voltage, and size resistors appropiately to power the lights.
Should be lots of power for many many LEDs.
Dave
Old DC power pack will work just fine. I use old wall warts which come in 5 volt, 9 volt and 12 volt outputs. I use incandescent bulbs for structure lighting, I think they have a nicer, more realistic color than LEDs and I don't have to mount a resistor and they don't care about polarity. I have two wall warts to furnish plus and minus power to my Tortoise switch mahines, and another one to furnish 12 volts to a structure lighting circuit.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
I used power from old DC packs and wall warts, but finally gave up on having so many individual separate boxes. I now use cheap DC supplies found on eBay. These are 12 volt supplies. I put a fuse in series with each one, and wire each to a switched bus su I can individually control the structure lights and/or the streetlights.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Mel did you design this control panel or buy it? What did you do for the lights on it?
Camarokid65David how do you wire the wall wart to say a buss line for accessory lighting?
I mount terminal blocks to the underside of the layout in strategic locations, like under a cluster of buildings. I run a wire pair from the wall wart to the closest terminal block and then daisy chain the 12 volt power from one terminal block to the next. The structures all have feedwires that pick up power from the terminal block. I can remove a structure and take it to the shop for just loosening two screws on the terminal block. This way all the structures light up when I switch on the lighting bus, I do not have ( and see no need for) structure by structure control of lights. I don't bother with fuses or other protection devices on the theory that a wall wart cannot put out enough juice to start a fire.
My fuses for power supplies are to protect the supply itself. If you accidentally short out a supply for long enough, you end up with a useless brick. The same goes for overloads, when you put one too many bulbs on a supply. After toasting a couple of supplies myself, the fuse becomes part of the initial installation.
These supplies have no internal breakers themselves. Actually, some do have internal one-time fuses to guard against fires, but they aren't replaceable and once they go, that's the end of the supply.
Fuses and fuse holders are cheaper than power supplies.
Camarokid65 Mel did you design this control panel or buy it? What did you do for the lights on it?