Legacy version of TPC product?

IMO, having more than 10A on a single power district is too close to welding territory.  We tried that at one modular show when we had lots of passenger trains and were tripping the breakers a bit too regularly.  I'll never do it again, and I won't run my stuff on track with 20A on the rails!  We had several derailments, and some pretty noticeable weld spots on wheels.  The problem with combining bricks is the normally really excellent breakers on the PH180 didn't seem to work nearly as well combined for some reason.

I like the PH180 breaker exactly the way it works.  When I have an overload, I want to identify and fix it, I don't want the power to keep coming back on until I'm ready.

I agree on binding posts, I'd like to see banana jacks that offer the option of doing it with binding posts or just plugging in a jack.

I think the idea was to be able to pass the same current as a ZW or Z4K if needed, but I agree that it is just not needed, or wanted for most people.  

As a side note, Michael, if you are still not sure what to do with your TPC's I'll be happy to "store" them for you, free of charge.  

I think Lionel is redesigning the PH-180s to add the fold back circuitry. If I remember correctly, Mike Reagan indicated this in MartyE's video from the LUG meeting at this past York. They are not going to be available again until late this year.

Not sure I like this? I am with GRJ, I like it to trip and not reset until I find the problem. I also like the PH-180's as they are, extremely fast tripping. No changes needed. I am still hoping I mis-understood what they were saying about the changes.

I don't know why they'd screw around with a product that works and works well???  If you have a lot of problems with them tripping, you need to fix your track work or trains, not redesign the transformer!

I definitely agree! Did you hear the same thing at York, about the PH-180's?

I didn't really hear anything about what they were doing at York.

I was right about the re-design, wrong about the availability, that is early 2016. The new Legacy powermaster that replaces the TPC will be out in late 2015. They are redesigning the PH-180, seems they lost the design for the PH-180 and had to start over.

One guy in the audience wanted manual reset and one wanted auto like the ZW-L. Mike didn't really say what changes were being made to the PH-180, said that was all up to Jon Z. It's in MartyE's video, Mike Reagan starts at about 40:35 in.

Legacy Users Group April 2015 Video.  Q&A added

About 49:30 Mike talks about the powermaster that replaces the TPC and having the power pull back features of the ZW-L. So that was not the PH-180 it was the powermaster with fold back. I should have watched the video again before posting above. Poor memory. Maybe they will leave the PH-180 as it is, I hope!

I don't have a bunch of time to kill right now watching videos, I guess I'll see when the new models come out.

I guess I'm having trouble with starting the PH180 from scratch, why not start from this starting point?  The design isn't that complex and it works great!  Hard to believe they really have to start over.

It was kind of hard to hear, but sounded like someone in the audience offered Mike a reverse engineered schematic of the PH-180s. Could have even been the one you posted?

If you get caught up, all you need to watch is a couple minutes at each time I posted (40:35-PH-180 & 49:30-Powermasters), that covers the PH-180s & powermasters. That is if you even want to watch it.

The entire video is long, but still it's a good one.

From working in manufacturing for many years, there are several reasons for redesigning an already well selling/functioning product:

-making it less expensive to manufacture. This is not the same as cheapening the product. If you can make the same quality of product, but make it less expensive to manufacture, you can either increase your profits on the same quantity of sales, or lower your selling price and maybe increase your profits by increased sales.

-giving it some new "whiz-bang" features. Many folks like to buy the latest and greatest.

-continuing to produce the same or similar product when components go obsolete

-make it more reliable in order to decrease warranty costs improve your reputation in the market

I was at the meeting, so I heard it once.

I don't see any obsolete components that would be hard to replace, the relay seems to be the only question mark.  Since it's a very common specification, that would be pretty easy to replace.  The rest of the parts are all garden variety (and cheap) components.  I'm sure you could squeeze a few cents out of the design, but not much and keep the functionality.  I suppose L1 could be a custom part, again it's a pretty generic design, I think 100 turns around a coil form can't be that expensive.

Once didn't seem to be enough for me, I'm doing better after the second round.

Just to clarify my earlier post, I was incorrect about the re-design of the PH-180. After watching that part of the video again, it was stated they could not find the original design and were re-doing it for that reason. The audience then had two suggestions, manual reset and auto reset and it was stated that would be left to engineering to decide.

The Powermaster was what they were talking about regarding the fold back circuits. They didn't really say one way or the other about the PH-180s. Also, I agree with GRJ that the PH-180 is very good as it is.   

Yea, kinda like Microsoft. Every time they get a version of windows that works decently, they have to come up with a new version that's full of bugs, till they fix it.....again!

My comments were triggered by the new Powermaster, not the PH brick.

That's good. I need to learn to stop using my memory, it's not working too well anymore.

Thanks for your input gentlemen, including the circuit. Now I know that the LED circuit in the switch that burns out is 120Vac. Just didn't have the guts to take apart something that was working over a silly light, and will probably continue to do so.

My main reason for having anything between the track and the transformer is so that I can cut power to put items on or off that track, and the fold back is a nice feature. Hopefully I conveyed above that I think the extra box an annoyance.

I suppose that the fold back feature is really just very small phase angle, which would still require a triac, which would still require something to control it, which still requires that certain PIC micro-controller, so once you have all of that, you might as well through everything else in so you have one and only product.

Why did you replace the TPCs with Powermasters in the first place?  Don't the TPCs work with Legacy?

The TPC works fine with Legacy.

One of RoyBoy's points sure seems to hold.  Some new whiz bang feature?  They are blue?

We have the all of the schematics and design files for the PH180.  We are not changing this product.  We have had to change vendors and that causes delays in production schedules.

Not really, the breaker is too slow acting to protect Legacy electronics.  While many aftermarket products, and our TMCC lockon provide protection, it could be improved.  Add in the TPC does not support TR > 9, has all that serial comm wiring requirements, has 400 speed steps (way more than useful), and the ZW-L product now available, the TPC is just not in our future production plans.

We will have new products to fill in the gap for power controls, in the Legacy Power Master line.

That is great news. The PH-180's are one of my favorite devices for model trains. It's a really fine product, arguably better than the trains themselves and possibly just about perfect, IMO.   Thank you for posting this information for us!

Thanks Jon, glad to hear it.  I was hoping that was just a rumor.

I really count on the PH180 breaker as a rule.  I can see that the breaker is possibly an issue with the TPC, but you could add an external breaker. I'm personally not disappointed that it's going, I never believed in more than 10 amps on a single power district, too much damage in a derailment before the breaker trips.

As far as the TMCC Direct Lockon, that unit kills the DCS signal dead, so it's not really useful if you run DCS on your layout.  I tried three of them to make sure it wasn't just an issue with one.

GRJ,

Did not know that the Lock-on affects DCS.  Maybe we should have a look at that and see what can be corrected.

Jon, it was a surprise to me, but it killed it dead.  I suspect you could run the DCS in passive mode on the track and stick an RF choke between the Lock-On to block any DCS signal.  I was running it with the TIU feeding the track power through the Lock-On.  I kept one of the units just for testing and sold the rest since I couldn't see that I'd be using them.

what is the difference between the legacy powermasters on the market now and the ones that will be available at years end or beginning of 2016?

I replaced the TPC units with Legacy Power Masters because

- it was (and still is) a hellava sale,

- the Legacy PowerMaster have fold back protections against shorts (and also know when it time to give up, hit it today).

Although the TPC may have only TR1-9, you can still address them as engines. Or at least the IC Controls version I have. It is a bit confusing.

anyone??

The only thing I know of is the ability to use two PH-135's or two PH-180's (but NOT one of each, they each have to be the same) at the same time like the TPC's to supply 15 or 20 amps to the track from one connection. If there are more, maybe others will be along to add them.

I'm glad I got into prewar standard gauge trains.  Just keeping up with all new power systems will cost anyone a fortune.  Over and over again.  I was enthralled with TMCC and embraced it and still think it's fine.  I don't need Legacy to enhance my toy train fix.  For whatever reason, it just seems like overkill to me.  Enjoy your trains and technologies lads.  I have nothing against it.  I just don't need it.  I will defer any further comments on the new products to those who actually know how to use them.  Probably a good idea.