Is a tvs necessary

They don’t get shorted usually, and if they do, you can measure the short with a multimeter 

If a TVS "trips", you will have a direct short.

What about soldering a wire on to the tvs & as fast as the breakers are on the powerhouse's would i gain any more protection for my engines by using the tvs's ?

Yes. You can have a spike that will damage electronics and not trip the breakers. 

Royz Trains sells TVS units that are ready to wire in. They cutoff over-voltage over 35 volts. Isn't that a high value?  What value TVS do we need? I have a TVS built into each channel of my DCS unit, but I have started to bypass that recently and should consider putting a TVS in at my track connections. Do you need one for each drop, or should I be putting them at the distribution point?

George

OK ,good so far the only thing i need to know now is about soldering a wire on to the tvs & iam ready to go .

cjack posted:

They don’t get shorted usually, and if they do, you can measure the short with a multimeter 

Very true..but i shorted fixed 1 and fixed 2 tiu tvs's(crossed my outputs..was too lazy to get a flashlight) and my fast blow fuses blew. New tvs's now mounted at tiu outputs externally.