Powermaster 360 Question - One 180W Powerhouse?

I wouldn't suggest attempting is as the power protections programmed into the 360W PowerMaster are tuned to either two 135W bricks or two 180W bricks via the 270W/360W switch.

I'm 99% sure that one will be fine.  The whole purpose of the 360W version was to handle more than one, but I can't imagine it won't work with one.  The older TPC300 and TPC400 just paralleled the two transformers on the input.  I wouldn't be surprised if the two connectors on the PM-360 are in parallel as well.

@gunrunnerjohn, to elaborate on what I was getting at above, even if the inputs are wired in parallel, using a single 180W would effectively nullify the fold back protections which the manual states drop to 15A/20A which is still in excess of the 10A rating of the single 180W brick.

I guess it would simply trip the breaker on the 180W brick more frequently then and not really be a terrible configuration. Would it have been that hard for Lionel to add a 7.5 and 10 Amp option to these and/or bless&document single PowerHouse operation and any resulting caveats?

Thanks, bmoran4 and John.  Your explanation reminded me of what I read and ignored in the manual about the protection levels built into the PowerMaster.

I understand Lionel would like to sell two bricks with each Powermaster but it would have been more helpful if the manual had discussed the single brick option; even better if they had followed Bmoran4's suggestion of a switch to select single brick protection.  

I had a tpc400 which I ran on one PH180 for some time and the brick did trigger on shorts.  I think I'm going to give it a try.  It's either that or I'm going to have a Powermaster 360 for sale as I don't need 20 amps of power for my modest configuration.  Thank you for the information and opinions.

Merry Christmas!

Like the others said you should be fine. I’m 100% sure the 180W brick will trip before the PM has a chance to do anything because of the high current settings.
I’d be willing to bet Lionel can’t say you can use 1 and leave that other plug that is essentially hot with 18VAC open to anything that falls into it

@zhubl posted:

I’d be willing to bet Lionel can’t say you can use 1 and leave that other plug that is essentially hot with 18VAC open to anything that falls into it

Gee, I have 500 feet of track that has 18VAC on it open to anything that falls into it, why would I worry about a tiny plug?

Fair point John. Something tells me UL looks down on any uncovered and unused plugs in general though 😉