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In the US we use circuit breakers extensively to make power districts. We also tend to be more operations-focused and have larger layouts. The challenge?in matching up European and US DCC equipment is that we typically use 5-8A boosters here with circuit breakers set in the 3-4A range. A lot of our boosters are also older designs that take 125ms to trip, versus more modern faster booster designs in Europe. Our circuit breakers take anywhere from about 30ms to <1ms to trip. We also tend to need more current in a given power district, due to extensive use of multiple unit lashups, often all with sound.

Layouts in the US will often have anywhere from 2-6 circuit breakers per booster, sometimes more, and there are several examples of club or very large private layouts with 50+ circuit breakers installed. It's not always possible to design a layout in such a way, but ideally, we like to have no more than two operators in a circuit breaker district at one time, so that if one creates a short, it only affects one other operator, not several.

Many layouts are comically over-boosted. I often see 3-6 5A boosters installed on HO layouts that need 1-2. Many booster designs don't handle the startup inrush currents well, some newer designs can handle it, or the PSXX breakers manage startup current, allowing more layout to run off of a single booster. There are also many modular layouts where the distances involved require several boosters, Free-Mo can push DCC power down ~50ft of modules over 14 gauge wire, a group up here can push DCC power through up to 100ft of modules with 12 gauge wire.

Circuit breakers are used for short management via power districts the vast majority of the time, the new PSXX breakers handle inrush current management as well, but they can also be used for detecting track blocks and turning power on and off in staging or fiddle yards as a stationary DCC decoder in some specialized applications.

Alex