TTAT Power Cart

["Ira Schneider" <ira_schneider@iname.com>]

Hi,

For those of you who were at the TCA Annual Train Meet in May, you may remember that
late in the day tracks two and four acted like they were tied together.  We had no idea
what caused that effect.

I am doing some work on the power cart (which is here at my house) and yesterday
I powered it up to do some testing.  I found the same problem.  While I was
scratching my head, I heard a pop and something shut down.  I unplugged the
cart and looked at it.  There was smoke coming from the track surge protector
(which we got from Scott's Odds 'N Ends).  The pop I heard was the circuit breaker
on the track two Track Power Controller tripping out.

When I bypassed the surge protector, everything worked normally.  My conclusion
is that the surge protector shorted out internally and then died.  I will investigate
further.

On a positve note, I checked out the wiring of the various cables we have (i.e. the
Y-cable that comes with the Legacy system, the TIU to TMCC/Legacy cable,
the cable for the Track Power Controllers (TPCs), and the adapter cable I built to interconnect
the TMCC command base, the TIU, and the TPCs).  I came to the conclusion that we
could interconnect all of the units.  I tested this and it works.  In fact, it works even better
than with the TMCC command base.  When someone presses the E-STOP button
on the MTH handheld controller, the Legacy command base sends a halt signal to
the TPCs, shutting down the entire layout, just like when someone presses the HALT
button on the Lionel handheld controller.  (Using the TMCC command base, the E-STOP
button only sent a HALT command to TMCC command controlled engines - it didn't
shut down the TPCs.)

I haven't opened up the TIU yet to find out if it blew a fuse.  If you remember, sometime during
the show, track two could no longer be powered up when I routed power through the TIU.
I will investigate this problem soon.

I also haven't tested the PowerMaster Bridge yet.  This component is supposed to allow us
to control a Lionel PowerMaster (i.e. the controller for the track five transformer in the
siding power box or the controller for the track six transformer in Steve's transfer table
module).  The only thing I know for sure is that we cannot use both the TMCC command base
and the PowerMaster Bridge at the same time.  Lionel specifies that you can connect one or
the other to the Legacy command base, not both.  If we have four CAB-2 controllers at a show,
we can connect the PowerMaster Bridge and use the CAB-2 controllers to control tracks
one through six.  If we only have our two CAB-2 controllers, we can connect the TMCC command
base and use the CAB-1 controllers to control tracks one through six and the CAB-2 controllers
to control our mainline tracks (one through four).

I will keep you posted on any further developments.


Ira