ZW to power DCS & traditional?

Put some kind of current limiting device in series with the output terminals of the

ZW. See Jim Barrett's circiut breaker box. He used 10 ampere breakers. I built mine with two seven ampere breakers and two seven ampere fuses.  Seven amperes have worked fine for me. Some type of TVS would be advisable but I don't have them. Will add them in the future.

Al W.

I will give you some thoughts about Question #1. I think you're talking about a Post-War ZW, right?

The ZW is rated at 275 Watts *INPUT* not output. Some people have figured out what the output capabilities are, so I will let them chime in here, but I suspect that the ZW can deliver around 200 Watts continuously.  At 20 Volts, that's 10 Amps, total. (P = I x E) If you want to divide that into 4, equally loaded track circuits, you're looking at 2.5 Amps per track.

I hope this helps you in your calculations.

Of course, many locomotives with a decent sized train will draw far more than 2.5A at times, so that's probably not a practical limit.  I'd think maybe 5-6A circuit protection on each output would be more realistic.  Think of your house, if you add up all the capacities for all the breakers in the panel, they far exceed the main input feed capacity.  You probably aren't going to have a balanced load, and any overload isn't going to affect all four outputs, but rather just one.

I don't know about continuous draw, but I've managed to get a measured 230 watts out of a PW ZW(R) for about 15 minutes.  The temperature rise in the case was 7C during the test, so I suspect it wasn't at the peak, but it was still fairly cool.  The 200W figure is probably pretty realistic for continuous output.

Thanks everybody. Just simple fast-acting fuses at 7-10 amps? now I just need to locate the electrical parts! My next concern is keeping the engine batteries charged until I get up and running.

ChoChoWally, TCA 7812825

I'd lean to fast acting circuit breakers, just so you don't have to have a box of fuses, but either will do the trick.