TRANSFORMERS
THERE ARE 2 TYPES OF TOY TRAIN TRANSFORMERS, LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR
Linear transformers produce clean sine waves. This concept was used on all Pre and Post war Production by all manufacturers.
With the advent of reliable solid state electronics, non-linear transformers are now available.
The advantages of using a non-linear transformer:
A) The transformer essentially shuts down instantly when an overload occurs, usually with automatic recovery.
B) Many of the non-liner transformers, at low speed power, keep the voltage up and shorten the power-on time of each 1/2 wave. This gives standard locos more crawling power and an ability to effortlessly move a load of cars at 1/2 the minimum speed of the linear transformers.
Note: It is this feature that will burn out an After Market power supply that has not been upgraded.
C) Many of the non-linear transformers distort the sign wave for whistle or bell operation instead of just cutting out one half or the other of the wave form.
The wave distorting ones, when operating either the whistle or bell, do not cause the loco to either slow down or speed up. The half wave rectified ones cause a slow down.
See How Whistles & Bells Work for more details.
*Non-linear waveform transformers:
*Lionel Cab-1 TrainmasterTM operating Power MasterTM set to Conventional
*New Lionel transformers powered with "Bricks"
*Lionel BW-80, CW-80
*All TrolTM
*MRC Tech IITM
*Dallee HolsterTM
* Al TROLTM
MTH
*Z-1000TM
*Z-500TM
*Z-750TM (Do not use ones that came in Yellow boxes until you have had the factory update them.
I.E. These were the early ones.)
Note: No all Z-750s came in boxes, as they were also packaged in sets.
If you don't have or know the color of the box, do a QSI Power Guard test to determine suitability:
The
acid test:
If the spike
indicator light remains on at high voltages (without any load), do not use the
transformer until it has been successfully repaired by MTH. A properly repaired transformer will not keep the light on at high voltage. It may take sending it to MTH more than once.
What the Spike light shows is spikes being suppressed. A continuous on light is showing a continuous shower of pulses which overpowers the spike suppression circuit. A continuous stream of pulses will scramble any loco's sound system within a few minutes of operation.
After Market power supply Upgrades for non-sinusoidal AC power operation
After Market Power supplies must be Upgraded for operation with non-sinusoidal AC power.
An
update is available for the After Market power supplies which will save
these power supplies from destruction when used with non-sinusoidal
power sources. $15, $17 or $20, depending on whether
combs are already present on the leads.
See the reason under "B" above.
Note: Reliable sound
system operation with non-sinusoidal wave forms almost always requires a
sound system upgraded to either QS2p or QS3000.
Purse the complete list of chip types and OEM to determine which obsolete chip actually handle non-linear waveforms.
A very limited number of replacement After Market power supplies are available for $75 ea.
ACS-730 PowerGuard: Purpose
ProtoSounds, Proto One, Proto Plus, Proto Deluxe and Proto Deluxe II are trademarks of MTH.
ProtoSounds
is the QSI designed series used by MTH from 1994 to 2000 and is here
referred to as ProtoSounds1 or ProtoSounds(1) to eliminate confusion
with the completely different MTH owned Proto Sounds 2, etc.
QS1.0, QS1.1, QS1.2, QS2, QS2p and QS3000 are trademarks of QSI.
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