I've been following a couple of recent threads concerning powering Menards buildings with the 4.5 VDC wall-wart. It seems that the output voltage of the wall-warts is all over the place. Additionally, wall-warts are unregulated power supplies where the output voltage varies with the load meaning they are designed to be used with their designated load (i.e. building) and cannot be used to drive a second building even if the total load does not exceed the rating of the wall-wart.
I have multiple Menards buildings on my layout each of which requires a 4.5 VDC wall-wart. I also have multiple LeMax buildings and amusement park rides which use 4.5 VDC wall-warts. Other manufacturers have different voltage requirements. Anyway, back to my problem. I do not want to have multiple wall-warts for all the buildings/rides on my layout. I would like to have a single regulated power supply to power all these items. Now 5 VDC, 10-20 a. regulated power supplies are common. The question is will 5 VDC damage these buildings and rides or is there enough tolerance on the input voltage to these items such that they will operate without problem? Has anyone powered any of these items from a regulated 5 VDC source? The alternative would be to purchase an adjustable regulated power supply (3 - 10 VDC) and adjust it to 4.5 VDC. In either case, I would have to be aware of the total load of all the items so as not to exceed the limits of the power supply.
In either case, I want to take the output from the single regulated power supply and run a power bus around the layout. This would get rid of the wall-wart problem.
Does anyone have any thoughts and/or suggestions?
Paul
