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Hello,

 I am now in the planning stages of starting a CONVENTIONAL and LEGACY type layout. I have mostly post war Lionel and some Odssey Lionel engines. I plan to have around a 30 x 20 foot layout. I just purchased 2 Lionel TPC 300 controllers and want to know if l made a good choice in controllers as I want to use my OLD ZW transformers on my layout. Could you advise as how to wire them and what other cables I will need. Also to protect the newer Oddsey engines will I need additional circuit breakers such as the PSX 1-AC I'm reading  about. Thank you very much for all help forwarded!!

   Jerryd

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I don't know a thing about the TPC 300, but the PSX-AC's are probably the best circuit breakers you can get for your layout. I use them and they are very fast and also provide over voltage protection. They also have many other features you can use by adding things to them such as alarm LEDs and an alarm horn.

 

These are very nice devices and still pretty cheap when you consider the cost to replace the electronics in one of your modern command control engines. You could buy probably 4 or 5 of these for the cost of replacing the boards in just one engine. When you look at it that way they are quite inexpensive.

I am assuming that you do not have the instruction manual.  I suggest that you go to this web page and download the manual.  The manual is for both the Lionel 300 and 400 with the only difference being the amount of watts each can regulate being 300 watts for the TPC 300 and 400 watts for the TPC 400.  Once you read the manual then you can come back with more specific questions.  I will make this statement.  It suggest using 14 AWG wire but if you use the BPC to turn blocks on and off and switch the blocks to different controllers on your ZW the 14 AWG wire won't go in the screw down terminals of the BPC without a lot of effort.

 

http://www.lionel.com/Products...ineID=&CatalogId=

 

 

Last edited by Loose-Caboose

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