Home
»
Garden Railways
»
Forums
»
Garden Railroading
»
The Preponderance of Power Packs Puzzle!

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
Joe; Contrary to what you have been told; I do not agree with these gentlemen, you can operate power supplies in parrallel (not tandem please). I am a qualified Electrical engineer (old qualifications though) and I sold transformers and power supplies for about twenty years; about twenty years ago, then I moved into high tech batteries prior to retirement. For instace I have operated two LGB 1 amp power supplies inparrallel for years, to drive my big Mallet Loco with illuminated carriges. If they are identical, just connect the outputs in parrallel, ie red to red and black to black but make sure the control knobs are centred or at least working in the same direction. What helps a lot, is if you connect one at the furthest distant part of your layout from your origonal one, this gives a much more even distribution of voltage over the entire layout. If you make a mistake the overloads should protect them, if not be careful! If they are different, try to see if their specifications are similar, if so give it a try. If they are quite different, well send me through the details and I will give you an opinion, it will cost you a beer if and ever we meet inn the flesh. Paralleling power supplies will provide you with the sum of their capacities and will not affect voltage, this is why they should be very similar. I cannot see any valid reason to connect them in series, ie red to black then use the red and black left over and even I wouldn't do it. However before you do anything, look at the specifications for your loco and make sure it matches the specifactions of your power supply, if not see two paragraphs above Regards ian.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag