Power Strip Usage

If you are connecting the ground wire directly to the Base with pin #5, then it won't matter if you are plugged into surge protector strips. If your extra ground wire is connected to the house wiring ground after the surge protector, then the surge protector could be attenuating your signal. The best place to connect the ground "antenna" is pin #5 of the DB9 socket on the Legacy Base. You can buy the appropriate gender plug on Digikey, Mouser, or ebay. Maybe Radio Shack which seems to still be around mostly on line.

https://www.db9-pinout.com

It wont hurt to try. The only difference would be the strip's light/ led . It shouldn't really matter, but Ive seen far sillier things happen with electronics.  If there is no light on the strip all your doing is lowering potential resistance points, Id look elsewhere.

  Unfortunately nearly everything (not just trains) with electronics has someplace on earth where it wont behave as designed. Changing outlets or even the direction a unit faced at a certain time of day has been a cure for things I've worked on .... good luck hunting

There's always the TMCC Buffer if all else fails.

Yes John, I know. I just missed out on the run, you refunded my deposit, so I have replied I'm interested in the kit when available. Am I on your list? 

Thanks,

Joe

gunrunnerjohn posted:

There's always the TMCC Buffer if all else fails.

Except they are all "sold out". 

You didn't read far enough Marty, I'm doing another smaller run for the folks that missed out.

I hope the buffer will solve the problem for those 2 engines, one is my NEW Polar Express. Darn!!!

I'll at least try to take the power strip out of the equation as a test and move forward from there.

ironman1 posted:

Could plugging the Legacy power cord directly into the outlet help, as suggested elsewhere?

You could always try it and see if it works.

Removing the power strip from the equation & plugging Legacy directly into the outlet helped in one of 3 locations completely. I can circulate the engines on one complete loop only without them stopping. So what does that mean?

It means that you were not getting enough signal from the earth ground side of the signal.  By plugging it in directly to a wall outlet, you got better signal distribution through your home ground wiring.  Chances are your power strip is not helping the ground side of the signal.  If the signal isn't getting to the house ground properly, all the "ground planes" won't help much.  

I use a power strip on my layout with no issues.  The layout is 14x14.  Two Z4000’s, DCS and Legacy are on the strip.

As everyone has said the key is good ground.

Danr posted:

I use a power strip on my layout with no issues.  The layout is 14x14.  Two Z4000’s, DCS and Legacy are on the strip.

As everyone has said the key is good ground.

It really depends on the power strip.  Some of the surge protection in some power strips prevents a good path for the ground portion of the TMCC / Legacy signal to get to the house earth ground.

The previous owner of my house finished the basement, over 35 years ago, which is where my layout is. He considered himself quite the handy man & probably did the electrical wiring.

Carpentry & plumbing are what I will do.  I know nothing & do nothing with electricity except turn on a light switch & plug a device into an outlet. How would I know if I have "good ground"? 

IRONMAN1- If you have a volt/ohm-meter, check the voltage from the hot to ground/ hot to neutral,  at the receptacle. If you have close to 120V then you should have a good ground. It's possible that even though the receptacle has a ground prong that it is not actually grounded.  I would open it up and check to see what you have. Trace it back to the panel and see what is going on in there too. Wouldn't hurt to replace the receptacle with a new one too.

With the power off you can check continuity with an OHM meter as well. Should be close to 0 if the wiring is solid.

If you have another outlet near by that you know has a solid ground then run an extension cord and plug your transformers/ bases into that. If the problem goes away then my guess is the problem lies in the circuit you have the trains plugged into.

Finally- a new dedicated circuit from the panel would be my other recommendation.

Beyond that I can't help- I don't run any of the digital systems, strictly conventional in my little world.

Bob

One of these is at least a start. Available pretty much in any hardware store.

The signal is between the outside rails on the track and the connection to the ground wiring in your house. The ground wiring is being used as an antenna to radiate the signal to the antennas in the tops of your engines. It seems that the connection to your house ground wiring is affected by your use of an outlet strip. In that case, pin #5 of the Legacy Base is the better place to connect your additional "ground" wires that you installed to problem areas on your layout. It may be a better solution than eliminating or in addition to eliminating the outlet strip which only helped one of your problem areas.

A couple of things, first of all, thanks for the suggestions. I bought that exact tester years ago and tested my outlets. I don't recall having any problems, so I moved forward with ground wires running almost everywhere along the layout. What a pain that was & I can honestly say at the time, I wasn't impressed with the results. I think my problem is deeper, I'm willing to bet, the earth ground. If I haven't already mentioned, I am clueless to all things electrical, and in regards to the pin #5, I'm not clear on what the suggestion is. 

As far as my layout goes, I've been running within the limitations I experience, but that has kept me from moving forward with any kind of scenic improvements or any other additions. I hope to get things figured out eventually but I have a feeling I will need to seek out an electrician  to know for sure I'm on the right track.

I came close to selling my TMCC N&W J since I thought it was the problem, not the layout. Now I believe different.

Based on the thoughts here, would the buffer solve my problems, as John had suggested ?

Pin 5 on the 9 pin connector on both Legacy and TMCC bases is the same half of the signal that is put on the earth ground.  So in essence if you tap off pin 5 and run it near the trouble spot it's the same as using the earth ground.  If your strip is the issue, using pin 5 bypasses the strip. 

MartyE posted:

One of these is at least a start. Available pretty much in any hardware store.

 

Marty, what is this called?  I am now in the process of helping a friend with his ground planes on his large layout and I am not sure about the ground part of his outlet.

Roger Wasson posted:

MartyE posted:

One of these is at least a start. Available pretty much in any hardware store.

 

Marty, what is this called?  I am now in the process of helping a friend with his ground planes on his large layout and I am not sure about the ground part of his outlet.

Outlet tester in the generic sense.  Available at any Home Depot or such.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Po...ac7dwCFUqraQodRvkAUA

MartyE posted:

Roger Wasson posted:

MartyE posted:

One of these is at least a start. Available pretty much in any hardware store.

 

Marty, what is this called?  I am now in the process of helping a friend with his ground planes on his large layout and I am not sure about the ground part of his outlet.

Outlet tester in the generic sense.  Available at any Home Depot or such.

An outlet tester like this is used on a three prong outlet.  Purpose (Correct) noted at the bottom of the tester is to assure the outlet is wired properly, two yellow lights, middle and right, will light. The (5) incorrect wiring problems, are noted on the tester.  Most common, since a lot of older home wiring, had no ground wires, would be (top) open ground.    Open ground a problem with TMCC signal.  Often if a two prong outlet broke, or was no longer use-able, it was replaced with a three prong outlet, round third prong bottom not attached to any wiring.  larger left slot is attached to the white wire (neutral), smaller right slot is attached to the Black wire  (power). 

If the outlet is good, don't forget to check all the outlets on the power strip.

    This is a simplified statement I think was hinted to above;     I think it is possible an outlet could have a seperate earth ground which could test ok. But it still may not be wired to other grounds which themselves are earth grounded elsewhere. 

  In any case, I think adding wire(s) to pin#5 is the easy way out here.

How would you add wires to PIN 5? Has anyone done that?

Buy one of these...

https://www.showmecables.com/d...XEAQYBSABEgK_-_D_BwE

cjack posted:

Buy one of these...

https://www.showmecables.com/d...XEAQYBSABEgK_-_D_BwE

then which pin is 5?

See the pin out diagram on CJack’s first post in this thread.

So, without sounding too dumb, you just solder to pin 5, leave the rest alone & plug into Legacy?

Or is the ultimate solution the TMCC buffer to avoid all this jerking around?

Alright, sorry, I'm tired of feeling like an idiot.

I'm a graphic artist, not an electrical engineer. Ask me what 4 color process is, CMYK, RGB. What are spot colors, UV varnish, overall gloss aqueous. What's a gate fold? Then I'll be able to understand,

While it may be clear to most of you, it's not to me. Sorry, I need to be spoon fed for something of this nature. I can plug something in, I can solder A to B, follow clear directions, otherwise it's mumbo jumbo.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Joe

ironman1 posted:

Or is the ultimate solution the TMCC buffer to avoid all this jerking around?

The TMCC booster could be warranted but connecting the ground wires to pin #5 is advisable in any case.

Just solder a wire to pin#5 and leave the other pins alone. Then connect all your ground wires to that wire and place them in problem areas.

Graphics, that makes about eight of us I know of on here now My real intro to controls began with interest in typesetters and plate cameras.

  Don't feel bad Ironman, you are learning

  These folks can talk tech lingo that takes time to learn on top of basics   I was away for months so also have no clue what the "Buffer" is unless by chance that is Dale M's boost.  It also takes time for these folk to gauge your knowledge, and sometimes they try to answer to best help you long term, vs easy peasy, sometimes search homework is expected too. Ask again if it's not clear after some thought though.

 Im guessing your baulking at soldering here.  It's pretty easy; good solder and clean metal is 75% of it. A good skill to learn in the hobby as well. 

   But besides solder there is an alternative though a tad slower and more costly (till you can learn to hack like pro's ).    "Pinout" implies a female plug is, or can be utilized. I.e., crimp a female terminal on wire, insert into pigtail plug's hole#5 and plug the thing onto the board. All crimpers are not created equal. Getting a good one makes the job easy.     Note for the future, there are even special tools for removing terminals for each socket type as well, though a fat needle or hat pin can often push the tabs for release/removal without plug damage too, the tools are a breeze. 

This is a male plug end view. The female connector assignments are the mirror image.

Chris

LVHR

It's starting to make more sense & it's worth a try.

Thanks to all.

If you are using a TPC, the ground plane antenna gets connected to the COM terminal. I could be wrong here as it has been a few years since we did this at our club and it eliminated any TMCC issues we had in tunnels, etc. It might go to the DAT terminal on the TPC.

You can always put a 18 gauge wire into the computer port of a cab-1 into pin #5, the same as described in a previous post.

I found this item on Amazon (Sysly DB9 Male D-SUB Adapter Plate Connector RS232 Serial to Terminal Board Signal Module), see attached image . It may be over the top for my needs, but if the item will work, it's idiot proof. Insert a wire & fan out my ground plains from there? Any particular gauge wire recommended?

A confirmation that this will work would be appreciated.

In my quest for a better signal, I stumbled upon this layout video at various stages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtKCk2U8Rao

Seems this gentleman cut aluminum sheets, mounted at every overpass and grounded each. Looks like he has no signal issues. Would it be just as effective if the sheets were stapled to the underside of the plywood overpasses?

Do you have other engines that go thru these trouble spots?  What does the 2 engines do in the spots,stop and the headlight flickers? Did you try putting your hand over the engine when entering the bad spot and see if it makes it thru that area?  

Just some thoughts,Doug

I have 6 Legacy no issues. 1 Legacy & 1 TMCC that stop in 2 of the exact places. In 2 areas engines will stop & restart. 1 overpass stops dead, won't move, needs to be pushed, literally the worst spot, hard to reach. Used to be just the 1 TMCC engine, just stopped running it. Now with a new Legacy engine exact symptoms.

Very frustrating.