Lionel or MTH Power Bricks

They should work fine. I found this adapter for 11.99 that works with the Lionel 135 and 180 watt bricks. http://www.cttrains.com/mth3.htm Its is in this category near the  of the link the item number is PH-TIU. I posted a picture of it above the text. Hope this helps 

I build my own using a dual banana plug and the Molex connector.  Costs about $2 and five minutes time.

Thanks for your replied. I will purchase or build adapters if i can find the molex plug anywhere and give it a try. If it work i will just get a couple more Lionel power bricks since they have more power than the MTH power bricks. I like running passenger trains and the lights on the older cars draw quite a bit of power

I bought the dual banana plugs on eBay for $10 for eight of them.  The Molex stuff I happened to have from a previous life, but the part numbers have been posted several times.

Thanks for the info, i will look for molex part numbers

Thomas Stowe,

   Got to tell you I am not a fan of power brick at all, I use the Z4K, and a couple ZW's with a couple KW's.  I can vary the voltage input for many different required operation, including all my switches, in this manner.  Some like the bricks, I have little use for them.

PCRR/Dave

I have both an older ZW and a newer one powered by bricks as well as a couple KWs, but i thought you needed to add fuses for circuit protection. Currently I am using a ZW to power two channels and a KW to power one channel. But i added another layout in an adjacent room and have not cut through the wall yet. Thinking of adding a second TIU for this other layout and thats what i was thinking about using the bricks to power. I have two of the 135w from my heritage Edition ZW. Im running but newer PS2 and Legacy as well as sone conventional on both layouts and want to keep flexibility. Thought about just going and buying a Z4000 but thought a couple more bricks would be more economical. Why would you ever need to reduce voltage on the input side of the TIU? Im kinda new to DCS only had it for a year so, previously used TMCC and a cab 1, but purchased several MTH DCS sets over past few years that TMCC won't control unless i run them in conventional mode.

Thomas,

    You are correct sir about adding either the fast blow fuses or the 10 Amp breakers.

In my case the 10 Amp breakers with the ZW's and KW's are working out great.  It's the ability to vary the voltage for running the layout that I like so much and this is not really possible with the bricks, having old 072 switches on different levels of a layout calls for varied voltage from time to time.  I believe the old ZW's & KW's set up properly give me more flexability with power control thru out my layout.  Now it you have a medium sized layout with just a few modern switches that changes the requirements for varied voltage drastically.  Lots of men & ladies like the Bricks, and gunrunnerjohn has pointed out the difference in the Bricks for ya, they are not for me however.

PCRR/Dave

 

Thomas you can see I run the transformers from a control desk, notice the multi 10 amp breakers, for each of the different ZW's & KW's.

 

 

Ok, i ordered the PH-TIU adapters and used the two 135 W Lionel bricks without the ZW unit and all worked fine for newer MTH and Lionel engines as well as a conventional Lionel on the variable channel of the TIU. So i Think i will order a couple more 180 W lionel bricks vs the 100 w mth ones. If i put different trains ob the layout and I need more control to vary the voltage i can always put the modern ZW in line with the bricks. Should of ordered the bricks now i have to wait a few more days. Just did not know if i was going to have the horn issue with conventional engines with the lionel bricks. Guess my original ZW and KW can go on display and I will give this brick thing a try for a while.

I have both the 180W and 135W bricks, but I use the 180's on the TIU as I'm more confident in their circuit breaker capability.

Im online now shopping around trying to find the best price on 180w bricks