Circuit Breaker Survey

[rws1225]

I'll vote for PSX.  Have a PSX-4 and PSX-AR that were easy to install and have given me no problems for about 3 years now.

[SouthPenn]

BigDaddy

 

 

BroadwayLion

If the lamp lights up the short is still present

 

 

My stupid question of the day: Why does the lamp only light in the presence of a short?

 

The lamp does not light without a short because there is no current flowing. During a short current flows from one rail to the other. This current flows through the lamp causing it to light. 

[hdtvnut]

I have five psx's here and a psx-ar.  Have installed about 10 more in two clubs.  One had to be replaced in about 10 years.

Light bulbs are not a great idea, because they probably won't work well with multiple units or lighted passenger trains.  A bulb with low enough resistance so as not to bog down multple engines can pass quite a bit of current, and overheat damage can occur at the site of a short.  I once put a new Broadway Ltd steamer on the track of a DCC layout without electronic protection, which had an intermittant short of a driver to the shell, and the axle overheated enough in several seconds to melt the driver hub.  PSX's are unlikely to let shorted sites overheat, and work fine with sound engines.

[TJF]

I vote for the PSX it is much faster than any of the other ones.

[DigitalGriffin]

hdtvnut

I have five psx's here and a psx-ar.  Have installed about 10 more in two clubs.  One had to be replaced in about 10 years.

Light bulbs are not a great idea, because they probably won't work well with multiple units or lighted passenger trains.  A bulb with low enough resistance so as not to bog down multple engines can pass quite a bit of current, and overheat damage can occur at the site of a short.

 

1156 Automotive bulbs have low resistence till you crank the current.  Then their resistence shoots up limiting the current.  They then stay "hot" till the current is lowered enough to allow them to cool then the resistence lower.  I consider them an acceptable CHEAP solution and a lot of pros use them.

PSX's are the cadellacs of breakers.  They work well with sound engines.  We had one on a turntable and 14 tracks all filled with sound before the PSX couldn't handle the start up current. 

I also use PSX's block occupied hookups for signals on mine.  The only disadvantage to this approach is I also have auto braking districts.  I cross a red signal, my layout switches to DC for that block, forcing the train to SLOW to a stop.  When I throw the DTDP relay, I loose the block detection, so I had to install a second set of detectors for the DC side.

HOWEVER all breakers I know of just break the single leg, not both.  This is kind of dangerous if you have a backfeed situation and could damage your booster.  I had several boosters at the club burn up for this very reason till I successfully isolated the sections that were causing these issues.

For accessory power (I run 5, 12, and 15V accessory power lines) I use glass tube circuit breakers attached to the main source distribution bus point.

[Stevert]

I formerly used a PM42, and a pair of AR-1's for the two reverse loops. 

I'm currently (no pun intended) switching over to a Digitrax BXP88 (8-section solid-state circuit breaker with detection and Transponding for each section) and two Digitrax BXPA1's (single-section solid-state circuit breaker with auto-reversing, detection and Transponding) for the reverse loops.

The changeover isn't due to any issues with the PM42 or AR-1's; they have worked perfectly for me even since converting to only sound-equipped locos on the layout.

It's simply the easiest and most cost-effective way for me to implement detection for the eventual addition of signaling

[DigitalGriffin]

Stevert

I'm currently (no pun intended) switching over to a Digitrax BXP88 (8-section solid-state circuit breaker with detection and Transponding for each section) and two Digitrax BXPA1's (single-section solid-state circuit breaker with auto-reversing, detection and Transponding) for the reverse loops.

I thought about doing this too.  I still have to use a seperate feedback board for Loconet so JMRI knows which blocks are occupied.  That just adds to complication.  But my system is working as it is now.

[rrinker]

PM-42's break both legs of the protected track section.

Good old relays. Still useful.

PSX-AR should break both legs as well, it has to to be able to reverse (transistors wired as a DPDT switch. The other PSX series though, looks like only one leg, you can see the one big trace go right across the board from the input side to the output side. I also just noticed they have a capacitor across the rail A and rail B traces. Now that's kind of interesting. Wonder if that's to compensate for the inductive factor of the current sense transformer.

                         --Randy

[robkoz]

Wow. Not much confidence for EB1's.

[rrinker]

robkoz

Wow. Not much confidence for EB1's.

 

 Where's it say that in this thread? Gary's were not failed, they were in programming mode (which fairly early on in discussing the issue I asked if the jumper was on..). 

                             --Randy

 

[BigDaddy]

robkoz

Wow. Not much confidence for EB1's.

That was a separate thread(s) where Gary unwittingly reprogrammed his EB1's.   It was suggested that could have happened, but he chose to replace them with PSX's.  NCE found they were reprogrammed but otherwise working normally.

There is a MRVP series Rehab My Railroad, where a PSX board died and needed replacement.  They didn't discuss the whys, but everything can fail at some point.