DCC Impulses Column - 5
Many of the high amperage boosters are designed for larger
scales and have unbelievable power delivery capabilities.
They can overwhelm smaller scale rolling stock with their
instantaneous current delivery possibilities. The NCE 10-amp
booster, for example, can deliver 60 amps into a short faster
than a circuit breaker can trip.
Our club layout
uses three boosters feeding 17 circuit
breakers to distribute power across the layout. When we had a
failure just before an operation session, we jumped a connection
between two booster districts and keep on trucking (see video).
5. Sound decoders take a lot more power
I think this got started when sound decoders started using
larger energy storage capacitors to keep them running over
minor power dropouts. They do consume a lot of power when
they are “cold started.” The initial inrush current is quite large
and can overwhelm some boosters and circuit breakers.
Consider this. A very common rating for the audio power out of
a decoder is one watt. One watt of power from a 10-volt sup-
ply (a low value for the DC generated off a DCC waveform) will
consume 0.1 amp when making a lot of noise. A running HO
loco will consume probably ½ amp under the same conditions.
Thus, the sound decoder only increases the power needed for
the loco by about 20% when running hard.
6. BEMF never works for consisted locos
Absolute statements are always wrong.
“Can have issues”, yes. “Is more sensitive to loco and decoder
differences”, yes.
Let’s use my club’s experience again. We have six consists of
two or three locos that we use on a regular basis. All but one
“After start-up, a sound decoder does not
use appreciably more power than a non-
sound decoder.”
5: Tsunami sound decoder in Atlas C-424 HO-scale loco.
5
MRH-Mar 2014
