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Reply to "Post war ZW transformer circuit breaker pops after 5 - 10 minutes of running 3 trains simultaneously; what's up?"

An inexpensive line-side power meter (about $10 on eBay - free shippinb from Asia) can give some insight into what's going IN to the transformer.  These widgets have been discussed in other threads but the price has come down since they first became available.  Here one measuring a Z-4000 at idle (no load) showing 13 Watts going in from the wall.  Cranked up one handle to 16V AC with 4.4 Amp load (70 Watts) and now 101 Watts going in.  LCD a bit difficult to photograph.

input side wattmeter

Still requires some "do the math" to adjust for transformer efficiency and such, but another way to see what's going on.

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  • input side wattmeter

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