Rob Gould's DCC Corner

 

 

After about with short circuits this winter I decided it was time to evaluate my DCC system.  Overtime my layout grew but my Digitrax system did not.  At any given time my layout had 39 locos & 5 of those had sound. If I was running 3 trains at once that might be 8 or 9 locos at once.  Also I went  from 3 small staging yards to 3 big staging yards.  Clearly I needed a booster.  My thought was that the current draw from the larger layout with more locos and a longer track bus was part of the problem with short circuits.  Some DCC systems are fooled into to thinking the large current draw upon power-up is a short circuit when the system is trying to recover from a real short circuit such as a derailment.  Digitrax makes boosters and circuit brakers.  Most of the articles I read about enlarging your DCC system point out that you may not need a booster but rather a circuit breaker.  I decided to add both.  I added an 8 amp booster and 2 circuit breakers that have 4 districts per unit.

 

Centralized vs Distributed Boosters

The hardest part was deciding how to divide the layout into isolated blocks with double gapped rails.  Only slightly less harder was getting over the fact that I removed dozens of insulated rail joiners when I converted to DCC.  Now I was putting some back in!  Here are some thoughts on dividing the layout up into blocks.   Choose areas that you can see such as the end of a staging yard and make that its own block.  Make blocks where locos tend to congregate such as a shop scene or industrial area.

I choose 7 blocks and thus have 1 spare circuit breaker for expansion.  I located the booster as far as possible from the command station.  Also I added a new powers supply which handles the command station and booster.  It is interesting to note that each breaker needs its own power supply separate from the command station/booster power supply.  You may want to consider a toggle switch which could shut off areas such as a diesel terminal when not in use.