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Posts Tagged ‘Power Supplies’

The Lionel ZW Transformer

April 10th, 2009 No comments

Tom from Wisconsin asks “Hi, I was reading a post on Home racing world and happened to notice that on Dave’s track he is using a Lionel 275 watt transformer I am guessing that it is the ZW four train type. Could someone explain how that is wired to the track? Thank you.”

Yes, Dave is using the ZW type. He loves to crank up the voltage!

The terminals are shown here at http://www.davestrains.com/access/ZW250w0109d.jpg/ (This is a Dave unknown to us and was the first picture I found on Google image search)


The terminals on our schematic transformer are labeled 1 and 2. These are equivalent to terminals A and U on the the ZW. So, Dave is not using the full capacity of the transformer. There is plenty of power on a single channel to run 8 standard 1/32 scale motor cars.

On our diagram:
1 = A
2 = U

You can read more about the electrics here:
http://ac2car.org/electrical/

And the track wiring schematic is at the bottom of the page:
http://ac2car.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ac2cartrackwiring.pdf

the car wiring schematic is at the bottom of the page:
http://ac2car.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ac2carcarwiring.pdf

Do I have to use a model railway transformer or will any AC transformer work?

April 1st, 2009 No comments

No need to specifically use a train transformer, but we just thought it would be easiest to point guys to those. They have good adjustable voltage range and are easy to wire up and available on eBay.com for not too much money.