Phasing

The old ZWs were not designed for today's electronics. That said.

So I don't know if their polarity can be reversed such that the Cab2 base CAN be damaged.

It won't matter. The whole reason for phasing the transformer is to make sure that the output from the transformer is the correct voltage (if you are out of phase, you can get a situation where the transformer is putting out too much voltage because the outputs are out of phase and you get what some laughing call constructive interference. What you want is destructive interference, where the signals are phased and end up with net potential of 0 (ie, when phased, if you put a meter across the same hot output on the two transformers, like A to A with the handles set to same output voltage), should be 0 volts.

So if they are properly phased, the cab 2 will be fine. The risk would be putting out more than the voltage the cab2 can handle (I don't know personally how many volts it takes as input, if it uses the 14v fixed output), but if they are phased properly as I mentioned above, they will get what the transformer is supposed to give them. I don't think you have to worry about the circuit breaker or tvs, I don't think they would be affected by surges caused by something happening via track power, but I could be wrong about that. Wouldn't hurt putting a fast blow breaker between the transformer hot terminal and the cab 2 base and putting a tvs across the terminals (Common and the power output terminal that goes to cab 2).

@obxtrainman posted:

Greetings, I have my two PW ZWs phased. All commons hooked to a common terminal strip. My question, before I plug in my Cab2 base with polarized plug, is does it need to phased with the nonpolarized plugged ZWs. I can’t think of a reason why it would need to, nor can I think of a way to do it. I’m gun shy because of a past experience with a first generation TMMC base I might have ruined 20 years ago. With this command system no longer readily available, I’d hate to truly mess up over something stupid.  Thanx in advance for any help.

You don't have to worry about phasing with the Cab-2 Base.  Although like a transformer the power that goes into it is AC, unlike a transformer it doesn't come out as AC, so there's no "phasing" needed on its output.

Just for completeness it doesn't come out as DC either.  It's a Radio Frequency (RF) signal, which is neither of the two.

The wire we connect between the binding post on the Base-2, and the outside rail of the track it's connected to, are one of two parts of the antenna that transmits this RF signal to the engines.  (The second part of this antenna is an earth ground connection, which is the ground pin on the Base-2's power block, i.e., the round pin that goes into the wall socket when you plug the block in.)

Not paying attention to phasing won't hurt anything.  Not paying attention to the earth ground won't either, but it just won't work at all if you don't.  A good earth ground is required.

Mike

The Cab-2 Legacy Base, Like the original TMCC Command Base, is passively connected only for radio signal propagation and doesn't care about transformer phasing.

Thanks everyone. I didn’t think it would matter. Just being careful.