Tripping Circuit Breaker Lionel 180W Powerhouse Brick

The in rush of current to the capacitors may be overwhelming the breaker. Adding the cars individually breaks up the spike. You'll need someone with more electronics knowledge to explain it better.

Does it always do this? Could one of the passenger cars been derailed? Sometimes a car that's been sitting gets bumped accidentally. How many amps is it drawing when you get it running?

George

If these are the new 21" cars then Boilermaker is probably correct. You have ramp up the voltage slowly.

Pete

@George S posted:

Does it always do this? Could one of the passenger cars been derailed? Sometimes a car that's been sitting gets bumped accidentally. How many amps is it drawing when you get it running?

George

Always happens, no cars are derailed, don't have an amp meter. It's like I said remove three cars, apply power then add one car at a time and all is well. 

@Norton posted:

If these are the new 21" cars then Boilermaker is probably correct. You have ramp up the voltage slowly.

Pete

These are 18" cars but your remedy of ramping up voltage slowly worked.

Thank you very much.

Lionel should consider putting current inrush limiters in these cars with the big capacitors. This is also a case where a fast breaker is actually a handicap. If you were using an old ZW or even a lowly 1033 this wouldn't happen as the circuit breaker would take to next year to trip.

Pete

I guess that means the capacitors are drawing more than 10 amps before they reach their max capacitance. The three extra cars must be putting the amp draw over the 10 amp breaker limit. Raising the voltage more slowly, slows the speed of the capacitor charging and reduces the amp draw. It's an interesting issue. Depending on how long the capacitors hold their charge, the issue could go away if voltage was dropped and raised quickly again, but that's not a solution, just an observation.

George

Not surprising, Lionel put supercaps in all the new LED lit cars, and given what I see for other applications, you can have a momentary surge of an amp or more if there is no inrush limiting.

When I did my YLB - RailSounds Battery Replacement product, I limited the inrush current to 1/2A, before that addition, it spiked at over 2 amps!

The PH180 has an intelligent breaker that knows the difference between a quick current spike (looks like a short) and a slow current spike that looks like a momentary load increase.  It'll trip on the quick spike right away, but it'll give you a little time on the slow spike in case it was just your dual Pulmore locomotive hauling all those diecast cars up the grade.

Thanks all for your help.

One further note on these cars, 6-85227/30/33/36, the majority of the truck journal caps were off the trucks loose in the box, some axels also loose. Should go back to Lionel but send something back now and who knows when I'll see them back, took forever for the return of my Mogul and that was when times were good. China, sure giving us fun times these days.

@Norton posted:

Lionel should consider putting current inrush limiters in these cars with the big capacitors. This is also a case where a fast breaker is actually a handicap. If you were using an old ZW or even a lowly 1033 this wouldn't happen as the circuit breaker would take to next year to trip.

Pete

The KW breaker.holds more amps than a 1033.  It uses a ZW breaker with the wire looped around the breaker's case to increase the temp so it trips sooner.

Large.capacitors in the stay alive/anti flicker light circuit would explain it.  Something to slow the rush is all you can do.

They charge like a battery, once charged the current used drops to about what each lamp uses. An inrush limiter or even a resistor.on a few cars might help.

A 1033 is rated for 5 amps. The engine plus ten LED lit cars will only draw about 2 1/2 amps once the capacitors are charged. I would bet you could open the 1033 to its full 16 volts and the breaker would not trip even if instantaneous current draw exceeded 10 amps because its way too slow to respond. Got one? Try it.

Pete

I'm with Pete, it takes a lot to trip the breaker on any PW transformer.  I've had direct shorts on my old 1033 that I use at the bench, it grunts a lot before the breaker trips.

For a fix for these cars, I'd probably  consider an inrush limiter.  The Cantherm MF72-033D7 would be a good choice, they're only 37 cents.  Place in the track power feed to the electronics, job done.

Why Lionel didn't include such protection defies logic.

@Arthur posted:

Thanks all for your help.

One further note on these cars, 6-85227/30/33/36, the majority of the truck journal caps were off the trucks loose in the box, some axels also loose. Should go back to Lionel but send something back now and who knows when I'll see them back, took forever for the return of my Mogul and that was when times were good. China, sure giving us fun times these days.

It is not all that hard to replace them yourself. Just takes some patience. The equalizer bar actually holds them in place. I had sent a couple of my PE passenger cars back to the dealer. When they came back, one had had come off. So, I just fixed it myself. 
Somewhere on here there is a thread about this problem and it includes some photos of what needs to be done.

@Big Jim posted:

It is not all that hard to replace them yourself. Just takes some patience. The equalizer bar actually holds them in place. I had sent a couple of my PE passenger cars back to the dealer. When they came back, one had had come off. So, I just fixed it myself. 
Somewhere on here there is a thread about this problem and it includes some photos of what needs to be done.

Thanks Big Jim, found the old post.