I am reading a magazine, DCC Made Easy ( MR Book ) , It does not, of course tell , a.do short circuits occur very often ? b.are these breakers like the house ones in that they can be reset? and are they costly? c.when sectioning my layout, are extra boosters costly? As you can see,I am into the idea of going DCC, but me and OHMS law never did see eye to eye.All I can vision is blowing 500.00 or whatever dollars out the window because I was unsure. Oh well I think it's time to hit the sack, been reading too much today, I think. Thanks in advance for your help, Cheers all.
Well, there is a distinct difference. Any DCC set comes with a booster, usually from 2.5 to 5 amps. The boosters have a circuit breaker inside them. The amount of power you will need depends on your scale and the age of your engines (older models tend to draw more current) along with the number you intend to run. Also it will depend on other accessories you draw off of track power (like lighted passenger cars). On my old club layout (120x30 ft) we had 3 boosters for the entire layout. But, we had several circuit breakers. The circuit breakers (manufactured by several of the companies) are auto-resetting so that once the short is cleared, normal operation can resume. So if you run into a switch the wrong way and short the frog, simply throwing the switch will clear the short since the frog changes to the other rail (assuming you have set your switches up as such). When these shorts occur, all movement on the power district is halted since the short travels all the way to the breaker in the booster. So you use extra breakers to isolate areas where there are a lot of shorts. A busy yard or a large switching area is an ideal place to have a circuit breaker so that a short in that location won't affect mainline operation - it prevents the short from returning to the booster and shutting down the whole district. A long mainline run can be divided into breakered sections. There are many options, but it all depends on your layout and operating style. Boosters prices vary depening on amperage and company. Circuit breakers run about $35 for a single, or $90 for a single PC card with 4 breakers on it. Tony's Train Exchange has a good list of products and prices. You can find them at www.tonystrains.com Fire away with any more questions you may have.
