After Joe went back to do a clinic, I took over as the cameraman and Les took over as the interviewer. I think he did a really good job!

Nice job of editing my "after the interview" shots as well, Joe. I'm glad we took the time to shoot those.

What can be said to allow me to sleep without thinking about 30-amp track power meltng my models and burning my house down?

Mark

That 30 amp surge (no doubt coming from a capacitor, not unused power supply capacity) is designed to accommodate brief millisecond current peaks, and won't be sufficient to supply a constant 30 amps to a half-second or longer short. The supplies also can tell the difference between a millisecond current surge and a longer short ciruit event. The supplies do their "beep beep" thing quickly with shorts to minimize the opportunity for damage - it seems like it should work pretty well.

The ZoneShare is a clever electronic solution that works kind of like the auto tailight bulbs. It allows you to subdivide a single booster district into 4 subzones so that a short in one subzone does not shut down the other 3 zones. It's a nice clean solution, but at $180 ($45 per zone) it costs more than Tony's power shields ($30), and *way more* than the $2 per-zone cost of the humble 1156 auto tailight bulbs.

Besides, the most likely cause of any brief current peak would be current-hungry sound locos. Unless those locos are running themselves while you're sleeping, you can relax and have sweet dreams!

Well you could always turnoff power to the entire layout before leaving the room. I don't like leaving the layout power on and I only have 5a boosters.

http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/gazette/clippings/item_01jan16.htm

Regards,

Charlie Comstock

Thanks Jeff you were great behind the camera as well I had fun running after him with the mike!

The next time we do this we'll have this batch under our belts....