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I am having problems with one of my locomotives throwing the breaker. If I run two trains at once the circuit breaker will blow. I have two loops of track with one power source coming from my TIU. The TIU is powered with a Z1000 brick and my layout is small at just 5X10. I went through the track and check continuity on both loops and all is well. Another strange thing is it blows the breaker on the power strip before the brick. I tried a different power strip and hadd trhe same results. Ifr anyone has another solution that would be great.

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No the circuit will break on either the strip or the brick. I have a really good power strip and there are other things plugged into it. I tried plugging the brick directly into the wall outlet but I had the same results. It just doesn't make any sense at all but I am no electrician. I do not want to rewire the track power for the layout but I think that maybe the only solution.

Well, here's one scenario.  Let's say a power strip can support 1200 Watts and the Z-1000 is capable of 100 Watts...and both are "protected" with a suitable a circuit breaker.  I am purposely not getting into the details of Amps and such.  Just broad strokes here.

Suppose all your other devices plugged into the power strip are using 1100 Watts.   Suppose an engine draws 50 Watts.  Everything is fine.  The power strip and the Z-1000 are not overloaded.  But now add the 2nd engine drawing an additional 50 Watts.  Now the power strip is at 1200 Watts AND the Z-1000 is at 100 Watts.  So it's a coin toss as to which breaker trips first.

Note that if above scenario indeed described the situation, then swapping in the 275 Watt capable ZW simply means the power strip will always trip first.  That is, with 2 engines the power strip will be at its 1200 Watt limit but the ZW will "only" be at 100 Watts and hence not at its limit.

Last edited by stan2004

I got the inline fuses last night and I will give it a whirl. They suggested putting them on the common lines too which I will. I know my ZW breaker is fine as I just had it rebuilt but it doesnt help in my case since I need it on the power side. One question though that I didnt see and answer to. Does it go between the track and TIU pr the transformer and the TIU?

By 5-20 I assume you mean an assortment of say 5,10,15, and 20 Amp.

Peeling the next layer of the onion, Watts = Volts x Amps.   If you look at the 18V output, 100 Watt Z-1000 you'll see a 6 Amps breaker.  18 Volts x 6 Amps = 108 Watts.

I'm not familiar with how the ZW can "allocate" its 275 Watts to the various outputs.  But assuming you'd set the ZW output to 18V, then 10 Amps would be 18V x 10 Amp = 180 Watts.  I'd start there. 

Note that 5 Amps would only be 90 Watts so you'd be no better off (so to speak) than the Z-1000. 

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