I have the zw hooked up. With the 7 amp breaker in series. I put a screw driver across the rails. I get a spark. However the breaker never trips. I am only holding the screw driver down for a second or so for fear of frying the zw.
It seems at this point that I have no circuit protection. I am trying to have a modern breaker trip before the old zw one.
That's not long enough for a test. Lionel specified something like 10-14 seconds for the ZW. Why are you testing with track and wiring, & without an ammeter? We have no way to see what resistance is in your circuit... depending on the wire, it may never trip.
To test the breaker(s), connect the breaker to A-U of the ZW and crank it up.
If you want to see at what amperage the breaker trips, put an ammeter in line(series) with the breaker and raise the voltage more gradually watching the meter.
The breaker is coming off the terminals. I just put some track in there after the circuit. Figured that is a more real world test. The 7 amp breaker never tripped. However at full bore the zw only pulled 5 amps. So I guess I need more of a load?
I am using test leads so the wire is probable 20 gauge. My layout runs on 16 gauge. But I don't pull a lot of amps. A short would though. That's why I want the breaker.
