I would never leave the train equipment powered up 24 hours a day your asking for problems, especially because the power company can have any power transients at any time especially if there is a car accident and a pole is take out or power grid sends a voltage spike which can cause hi voltage emf spikes which can damage electronics components easily !
Alan
Verbatim from a FDNY Fire Marshal - I’ll take his word for it.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I suspect there are many other places in the house that are far more likely to have fire issues than the layout, especially if you have done proper wiring and have circuit protection in place. Think of how many toaster ovens and coffee makers burn down houses!
That is why I have extinguishers everywhere in the house, especially the kitchen. We do unplug appliances when not in use. Our extended family has had two house fires with injuries (older homes). And yes, I am overly careful.
I highly recommend you turn off all power to the trains when leaving the room.
@Mark V. Spadaro posted:Verbatim from a FDNY Fire Marshal - I’ll take his word for it.
One guy trumps any other opinion? OK, if that works for you. 
Yup - Works for me🥸 Probably guilding the lily, but he was speaking from his experience, not an opinion, nor a statistic from the UFA, or the NFPA. And, I’ll go by his opinion. I’m sure you know that FDNY Fire Marshals teach the Arson Investigation curriculum to the FBI?
@Mark V. Spadaro posted:Yup - Works for me🥸 Probably guilding the lily, but he was speaking from his experience, not an opinion, nor a statistic from the UFA, or the NFPA. And, I’ll go by his opinion. I’m sure you know that FDNY Fire Marshals teach the Arson Investigation curriculum to the FBI?
"The 356,500 home structure fires in 2020 (26 percent) caused 2,580 civilian fire deaths (74 percent); 11,500 civilian injuries (76 percent), and $8.4 billion in direct property damage (38 percent)."
""
Interestingly enough, apparently the defective power strips account for about 2% of the annual fatalities, probably because they might happen while you're sleeping. It also appears that when I search for reasons for power strips causing fires, most of the time it's stated that overloads are the top cause.
Now, I may not be the worlds greatest mathematician, but that looks more like 1% of the structure fires are caused by power strips and extension cords. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but inflating a 1% chance to the leading cause of fires is a bit over the top, at least IMO.
I'm also sure that one guy can easily be biased against Chinese imports and form an opinion not based on actual facts. Just because someone teaches something, that doesn't make him unbiased. I don't apologize for considering the opinion of a national organization over the opinion of one man who I know nothing about. I try to do a bit more research and not blindly trust a single opinion on matters that are important to me.
I guess you should also consider not buying Chinese manufactured appliances either, since they doubtless have more risk than a simple power strip. Oops, better avoid those Chinese manufactured trains, they're so likely to catch on fire...
Since I don't wish to get into a shoving contest on this point, this will be my last word on the topic, feel free to have your last word.
I turn everything off. Also have two gas/fire detectors under the layout and an extinguisher ready.
You might be able to turn on your layout with some circuit that you turn on when ever you are home and awake. That way it’s at the ready and still not at the risk of being unsupervised. The gas/fire detectors will go a long way to answer the cautions noted here as well.
There are two smoke detectors in my train room, one is on the central station alarm system, the other one is a local one but it's also wired throughout the house and all the detectors will sound if it detects a fire. All of the smoke detectors were replaced in 2018 after we moved into this house. The central station smoke detectors are also CO detectors. I have a combustible gas detector in the heater room as well.
The train room outlets are all Amazon Echo compatible, and I've set up to turn the lights on with "Alexa, turn the train room on" (there are other scenarios i've set up for different lighting like , sunset, midday and night). As far as train power goes (controlling transformers, TIU/AIUs, wireless modules, etc, it's a simple "Alexa, turn train power on".
Makes it all simple & convenient.
Short answer: nothing is left powered when I'm away.
@ScottV posted:The train room outlets are all Amazon Echo compatible
Well, you could mistakenly turn them on from anywhere in earshot of an Alexa device, not just in the train room...
I have Alexa everywhere .... and have never had that occur in the 3 years I've had this set up. I have an app on my phone that shows all outlets currently in-use, and can remotely turn it off too.
The bigger inconvenience is if my network goes down for some reason, then I have to manually turn the switches on to run my trains.
Just because it has never happened in the first three years, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen in the future. 
Nothing is foolproof... The folks at Amazon might decide to burn your house down...
When it comes to power strips always look for a testing agency approval such as UL, CSA, etc. There are others, but those two are the most common testing agencies.
No apparent testing agency approval on the power strip? Then don't buy it. Look extra hard on very cheap power strips - that testing isn't free, and it gets rolled into the price of the power strip.
Dale
For me everything is unplugged when not in use. Last year a tree root broke the neutral feeding the house, fortunately we were home. Each of the "Protected" power strips started smoking and would have caused a fire if we were not home to shut off the power, all the dumb strips were fine. Fortunately none of the major appliances were damaged and are all still working. What did die along with the protected power strips were all the LED lights that were on, the garage door openers, the Craftsman tool battery chargers, and one radio. There are still burn marks on the floor where the computer power strip was sitting.
After the power line was repaired and a new meter put in I looked at getting the garage openers fixed. After removing the control boards I notice two can capacitors that looked funny. In my parts box I had the correct items and once replaced the one garage door opener worked. Encouraged I opened the Craftsman V20 chargers, sure enough there were some swollen capacitors. When the parts came in from Digikey I got them working again.
Had I not been home I would have returned to a smoking ruin due to the power strips. Overall I got off cheap, about $10 in parts and some replacement LED lights. I now pay extra to have full house surge protection from the power company, but still I keep things unplugged since you never know.
I know what lightning can do first hand. Everything gets unplugged. Not just turned off, unplugged.
I run my trains with the DCS remote. I unplug everything when I’m not using it.
@Mike in NC posted:I now pay extra to have full house surge protection from the power company, but still I keep things unplugged since you never know.
FWIW, your whole house surge protection will do nothing to prevent a similar occurrence from a floating neutral. That's one flaw that will blast through anyway.
Double pole switches would solve the problem, especially in the power strips, but i haven't found one.
https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...5#157406524275628765
Very true, nothing is perfect but the monthly charge for the surge protection also insures major appliances.
Not to be outdone by the foil-wrapped Lindt ball I intadvertanly left across my test track at ~ 12-14 VAC. We use welders to thaw pipes in these parts, and this yeilded a similar result: liquified, creamy center! I think it was there several minutes before I picked it up to eat it....
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