Hi
I have been trying to figure out good wording for the question for a few days.? It is a little complicated to describe the track configuration and what is going on, but I will try here an see what questions everyone has.
We have two adjacent power districts, each powered by a DR5033 - booster #7 and booster #1.? Seems simple enough until you add the fact that at the junction of these two power districts there is a power routing turnout which is part of the booster #1 power district. The switch is oriented such that the diverging tracks run to the booster #7 power district (and the points end of the switch is oriented toward booster #1).
If we have a train that is running from booster power district #7 toward power district #1 AND the switch is set properly (i.e. it is not against you) the train will run through just fine.??However, if the switch is set against you, the train will stop.? There is no short on booster #7, nor on booster #1 - both show a solid green LED and a solid yellow LED.? But no red LEDs.
Further we measured the voltage and amps using our?RRamp-AmpMeter at booster #7.? Voltage looks good - 13.5 volts.? Before the train tries to cross the power district boundary, it is drawing 1.35 amps? (it is a consist of 3 locos and 10 lights passenger cars). As soon as the first engine truck wheel bridges the power district boundary the amps begin to climb quickly to 5.35 amps before we push the loco back to stop the bridging of the power districts.
Based on what we were able to measure, it would appear that the DR5033 boosters do not see this as a short.? Further it looks like power is being drawn from both boosters allowing us to exceed significantly the 3 amp out put of the individual power supplies - it is almost like they are being added.
I have 'mapped' the power feeds from the boosters as I know that having the boosters out of phase is often a problem between adjacent power districts. We use green and orange wire for our power bus wires, so I will use these colours to describe what I found.? If the switch is set against the train, the stock rail (outside rail) from boosters #7 is connected to the green bus wire, and the stock rail from booster #1 is also connected to green. With the switch set against us, the frog is also connected to the green bus wire from booster #1.? However the rail (inside rail) from booster #7 that leads to the frog is connected to the orange wire from booster #7.? ?When the wheel bridges green to orange at the rail cut, I believe this becomes an out of phase problem.
Questions:
- Should the DR5033 be able to detect this out of phase problem and should it short, shutdown, or what? Does anyone have any experience with this?
- Are we really in an out of phase condition when the green and orange are bridged?
I know that a picture would help.? I will try to create one tomorrow and and I assume that it can be attached by selecting the 'paper clip' and uploading a PDF.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Jay Lennox, Toronto
