Booster and Command Center supplies

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Hi Allan,

Ok, so things are going along pretty well. We found and corrected the not lighting light problem, and I'm on to wiring in the booster. I bought a beautiful 15amp 13.8vdc power supply to use for the boosters and command center. Then I read your advise to never never ever use the same transformer for more than one booster. You don't say why, other than it will cause problems down the road and can fry decoders. Can you enlighten those of us who are unenlightened? Is there a way to split this power supply among the boosters using diodes? I sure hate to waste all of this beautiful power on one booster.

-- John Hartline (hartlinej@direcway.com), November 01, 2004

Answers

John,

The advice not to use the same power supply for multiple boosters comes from the manufacturers. Besides the possibility of frying things, how much more reason do you need not to do this? :)

Back in the days before manufacturers were telling people not to do this, I tried it. I didn't fry anything, but I did have problems. That has been a number of years ago and I can't remember precisely what was going wrong.

Sorry, diodes will not electrically isolate two boosters fed by a common power supply. Each booster needs to be fed by its own secondary from a transformer.

I can't give you a short and sweet explanation without diagrams as to why you should not power multiple boosters from a single power source.

-- Allan Gartner (wire4dcc_admin@comcast.net), November 01, 2004.


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