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Common return using two different types of controllers?


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3 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

A man who rewires five mains leads into one plug is lecturing me.

 

Aren't you supposed to be working on your layout?

 

 

 

Edited by AndyID
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21 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Common return places the sections of track in parallel, therefore the controllers are also in parallel as they are all wired to a common return. The controllers are in series from the transformers and the sections of track, which in turn puts the output from the transformers in parallel.

 

Just... NO

 

You have a very fundamental misunderstanding of electricity and electronics.

 

Connecting the secondaries of two different transformers is (normally) wrong. True.

With such as American AC controllers, old Lionel stuff etc., then there is not much between the transformer and track, so that is rather dodgy and I can understand warnings relating to those AC track type systems.

 

 

However with any DC or DCC controller, there is no direct connection between the transformer and the track outputs and nothing done to the track output can ever feed back to the mains side.

 

[Designing electronics and industrial control systems for over 40 years].

 

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Even if you do connect two transformers together, the output of the second one is totally isolated. Those who do this sort of thing for a living will understand the principle of using isolating transformers for safety, and what it means in practice. I will say no more in case some fool tries it at home.

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