MTH TIU Fire During Open House

Gentlemen,

   You have just experienced one of the reasons I use the 10 Amp Breakers between all my transformers and every red Channel on the TIU's, even with the new transformers and their quicker internal breakers, this kind a problem can occur.

PCRR/Dave 

Good idea Joe. Probably wouldn't hurt to use some loctite after lock after everything is tightened.

Dave, as noted above, an adequate breaker or fuse will not prevent this event.  A poor connection will heat up at far less current than one would expect.

I myself do not trust crimp connections. All my terminals weather crimp or not are soldered. I am with Choo Choo Ken on this one.

Hmmm... maybe I am keeping that Fluke VT02 thermal imaging camera I found at 40% off list price.

I don't believe the problem is the crimp connectors or else you would see this happening on the Z-4000 transformers. The connector between plastic and the nut isn't as good as it being between 2 nuts as is the case of the Z-4000 transformer which uses the same dual binding post BB5100004.

that would have been hand to have that day

Constant observation. Sight, smell, touch.  Anything can happen. A (model railroad display) has become a relatively complex wiring system, with many points that can fail. IMO.

Mike CT. 

I always use the non insulated crimp die for connections, whether insulated or not. I can pull a wire out of the flat crimp, but not out of this method. Not a problem so far.

Joe, thanks for posting the nut size.  I picked up a couple of packs today at Lowes.

I am about to place an original-issue Rev G TIU into service on a layout I am building for my grandson.  Out of an abundance of caution, I opened it up tonight and can confirm that those old units had the connections soldered.