All my new booster purchases are NCE

I like NCE boosters - they work great with the auto tailight bulb short protection. The newer Lenz boosters are too fast and there's no way to slow them down so they work with the auto taillight bulbs. Digitrax boosters also work great with the auto tailights if you set the ops switch to slow the short response down to 500 miliseconds (half a second).

EasyDCC's boosters are also too fast - although they'll tell you what capacitor to replace if you ask to slow them down. However, they'll also tell you in the next breath that if you DO change the capacitor, they won't support the product any longer - which is rather annoying.

With NCE boosters, you do need to be careful and not put them on a common AC feed. I did that because Lenz didn't care (I feed my Lenz boosters from one large 16 amp megatransformer). When I hooked by NCE booster up to the common AC feed, I smoked it. A call to NCE quickly pinpointed my common AC feed - which is a no-no with NCE. You need to get each booster its own AC transformer feed from the wall socket to the booster.

Joe what do you think of the

Joe what do you think of the Magna Force MF615 DCC Power Supply? Do they work ok with the tail light breaker circuit? It's says that they have built in circuit breakers in case of any shorts they shut down and I was wondering if the 1156 bulbs will help stop them from shutting down.

Because I was out this weekend and found a pretty good deal and just bought 4 of them brand new for $33.50 each reg priced $45.50 each with a 25% off all purchaces and was planning on hooking them up to my Lenz LZV100 system as I  don't have any Lenz Boosters except the one I was useing and was told to remove it and just use these.

Dan

Magna Force MF615's are transformers, not boosters

The Magna Force MF615's are fancy transformers to power DCC boosters - you still need the boosters.

I use the MF615s to power my NCE boosters and they work great. The circuit breakers are if you have a short on the AC side of the booster feed, and they ordinarily won't trip if you have a layout short - which is a DC side short on the booster.

Thanks Joe I'm Still learing

Thanks Joe I'm Still learing DCC the NCE do work with the lenz system right.

Dan

Boosters are interchangable

You can use one system's boosters with another system's command station. Boosters can be swapped between systems.

So I could take a Digitrax

So I could take a Digitrax DB150 booster and use it with a NCE system, or a NCE booster with a Digitrax command station? I had the impression that I needed to stay with the same manufacturer.

Bob Hayes

Yep, you can mix them

Yes, you can mix boosters across systems. For instance, if you check the NCE documentation here - it explains how to make a cable to connect an NCE command station to Lenz, EasyDCC, and Digitrax boosters.

My own NCE system uses Lenz boosters as well as NCE boosters. And for a while it used EasyDCC boosters until I replaced them with NCE boosters.

Digitrax, however, tends to build their systems in one enclosure with both a booster and a command station, making it harder to mix and match boosters with command stations.

EasyDCC Booster comment

Joe, in reference to your comment on the EasyDCC boosters, was that the Booster5/10 series or does it include the new zonemasters? I see in the documentation that the zonemasters have an adjustable current trip. You have a lot more contact with the community, have you heard any feedback on them? I don't want to cut corners on something so critical to the layout, but I also want to conserve funding for other stuff. Besides keeping the cost down keeps the CFO/real estate manager(wife) happier.

All; thanks for the comments and questions, I've never had the space or time to build a large layout, and now that I have the space(if not the time really) I find that there is a lot I haven't thought of. My layouts up until this point have been smaller, and I pretty much operated, built and maintained them myself. Multi train operation was never really an issue, and the power requirements never exceeded what a 5 amp booster could provide. I did have my original 3 amp booster running the yard. So questions may bring up something I have not thought of.

Thanks

Sully Sends

Chief cook, Bottle Washer, and Minion(husband) to the CFO

Lake Superior and Southern RR

Adjustable trip is what you need

I was using the DCC Booster 5 series. Haven't tried the ZoneMasters, but if you can adjust the trip to around 500 miliseconds, that's enough to let the bulbs do their thing.

EasyDCC Booster comment

I have been using the EasyDCC ZoneShare and ZoneMaster Dual for years now. My layout is large so I broke it up into 4 zones. The ZoneShare will handle 4 zones. I run alot of double and triple headers. I've never had any problems. If I should have a derailment the other 3 zones continue to work.

Zonemaster trip time

Joe, looked over the documentation for the CVP zonemaster's, It looks like they trip at 10 ms by default and a whole 50 ms if you enable delay... GRRR looks like there are some NCE boosters in my future. BTW do you happen to remember which capacitor to replace on the booster 5 to slow it down, it turns out I have 2 of them, I forgot about one I got secondhand just before I dropped out of the hobby a couple of years ago. Since I'm back might as well use them until they smoke..

Thanks for any info

Sully

Chief cook, Bottle washer, and husband to the CFO

Lake Superior & Southern RR

Slowing down the trip time, Cap replacement??

All; it turns out I had another booster 5 still in the box I had bought, so I guess I'll try and mod the booster 5's to slow them down, I know if you change R5 to 19.6K  it slows the trip time to 130ms, is this slow enough or is there a different mod I need to try and find somewhere?? I'm going run the EasyDCC setup until it gives me problems and then switch, I can't justify changing at the moment. Thanks for any answers you can give.. I waded through the EasyDCC forum, But I didn't find any specifics.  I know Joe F. had said he likes 500ms. I'll probably expand the layout with NCE boosters, but I can't justify chucking a couple of hundred in investment in the 2 booster 5's right now.

Thanks again for any help anyone can provide..