Model Railway Forum

I've a number of DCC locos. How many can I have on live rails at a time without causing an overload?

The wiring is such that all tracks are live via a simple style of bus and multiple dropper wires, but it occurs to me that my Gaugemaster Prodigy Express will have a limit to how many amps it can have drawn. With a number of my locos having sound and various lights (direction and cab for the moment - no carriages with lights) I'm fearful of overloading or even permanently damaging the system.

Do I need to have sections of the track that can be isolated where locos can be parked?

I wouldn’t worry about it Ian. Until I tidied up last week, I would easily have more than ten sitting on the layout with two running and no issues.
I think the static draw of a decoder is so low it’s negligible.

Thank you for putting my mind at rest - I had visions of me having to undo all the wiring to create sections I could leave dead to store locos in.

Hi
The PE² has a current output of 1.6Amp (1600 milliamp).
As a very general Rule of Thumb and it will vary, but a parked loco sitting with no lights on or sounds playing will draw around 5 to 10 milliamps. A non sound fitted modern loco running with a light to reasonable load will draw around 200 to 250milliamp. Old locos with Ringfield or XO3/XO4 motors will consume more and frequently around 500 milliamp or greater. A modern sound fitted loco with its sounds on and parked will draw around 100 milliamp allow it to move then add that 100 ma to the 200-250ma already mentioned and that's approx. 300ma to 350ma.
So, non sound locos all running you could have 4 or 5 (1000 to 1250ma) and still have plenty of margin to play with Add a couple of sound locos running = say 350ma each that's 700ma then that leaves 800ma spare though you wouldn't normally reach or try and exceed the power supply limit.

Please note all the milliamp figures given are for general guidance only and some locos will draw less and some more than those I quoted, even two identical locos will be different.