Install A Manual Reset Switch On Your Model Railroad (425)

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:01][music] >> Hi, I'm Larry Puckett, the DCC [music] Guy. About 3 months ago now, I talked about these three electronic circuit breakers. And as a refresher, these are used between your DCC system and your layout to kill power to the track when a short circuit occurs, so that it protects mainly your DCC system from burning up as a result of attempting to re-establish power repeatedly for long periods of time. And in that video, I talked about using a manual reset button option. And what I want to do today is show you how you can create your own push button panel to go with your circuit breakers to manually reset the power to your track when the circuit breaker trips. And that's an important consideration, and I'll talk about that So, let's get started with the video.

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[00:01:18]>> [music] >> Okay, so I've got the piece of hardboard all ready. The pattern laid out for the holes uh for the panel. And I've made provisions for four holes, got them spaced out. I think I came in 19 mm here, then 30 30 30 and 19. So, that gives me even spacing. Now, because this is a 16 mm uh push button, I had to purchase their 16 mm hole bit.

[00:01:50]So, we'll get that uh drilled out. I'm going to go outside, and then I will punch four holes equally spaced so that we can mount those push buttons.

[00:02:01]Be right back.

[00:02:03]So, here you can see I've got all the holes cut out, and I've mounted one of the little push buttons here just to give you an idea of how that's going to fit. Now, the next step, I'm going to paint this green to match the fascia because what I plan to do is just to make a cutout for the push buttons in the fascia, and then mount this directly on the fascia itself. So, I'm going to go ahead take it back apart here, uh take this push button off, and paint it green to match the fascia. So, be back in a minute as soon as all the paint dries.

[00:02:38]Okay, so the paint is dried, and I've installed the four buttons the push buttons uh on the panel. So, give you a look at that.

[00:02:46]Now, these push buttons come with this connector already pre-wired. So, all you have to do is make the uh proper connection here, which is right here.

[00:02:59]And then you can do your soldering here separate, plug it in, and you're ready to go. So, that's what I will do underneath the layout. I will [snorts] pre-solder all of these connections, pre-wire all these connections to the circuit breakers that I'm going to be using. And then, once I install this on the on the uh fascia, I'll be able to just make the connections from the back, and not have to worry about standing on my head and doing any more soldering here. So, that's going to be a nice uh as I've as I'll show you in the video, the uh there's a little red LED outline here uh that comes on either when the circuit is active or when it's not. In so in one case, it actually will blink to show you or that the circuit breaker has tripped, and you do need to do a manual reset. So, the neat thing about this is it'll be right there on the fascia. It will either light up or the light will go out to tell you which one of the blocks is uh is shorted, and then you can just hit the button to reset the circuit breaker after you've cleared the short manually. And the important thing of that is as as as Kim Patterson pointed out in one of his follow-up videos after his layout fire, he now understands that it's very important to have a circuit breaker on your layout that will disconnect your DCC system from your track, and you won't have track power um staying on while you're having a short circuit on the layout. I like this idea of using the manual reset option because it means in order to turn power back onto the layout, you have to remove the short circuit. So, it means that if you go away or get distracted, and a train derails at a closed switch or something, then power is not going to be applied to the track until you fix the problem and hit that reset switch. So, that's very important very important part of understanding how your DCC system works and being safe on your model railroad.

[00:05:16]Okay, let's go on and take a look at the various of these setups, and as I say, I will provide diagrams for wiring each of these. So, check the description to this video, and I will tell you there where those are going to be located. I think YouTube now allows me to load files somewhere, but I've got to check into that. Otherwise, I'll put them on my website, and I'll give you that address.

[00:05:45]Okay, let's go ahead. So, right here is my EB1, which is the NCE circuit breaker. I've got a piece of track here connected to the output from it with a 14-V light bulb showing you track power.

[00:05:59]You can also see an LED right here that is on. It looks yellow, but it's red in reality.

[00:06:06]And [clears throat] that stays on to indicate power's going to the track.

[00:06:11]Then these are the connections here to the power cab. So, I've got two wires coming from the power cab feeding DCC power in right here. And it's off by itself there.

[00:06:24]Right here are the important connections because this is the push button that I'm using. You can see the red dim red LED illumination right here on the push button. And that's brighter in reality because I have a lot of lights turned on here to do this video. So, we'll you'll see how it works in a second. Now, this is a normally open push button, which means it doesn't pass any power through the push button until you press it to make it momentary contact. And then the LED is on all the time, but I'll show you how that works in a second.

[00:07:02]Now, so the connections here, the black and the blue wires are for the normally open position on this push button.

[00:07:13]The yellow and the green wires are the LED connections on this push button.

[00:07:20]Now, what I'm going to do is and I've got this set up for manual reset. And to do that, you can use your power cab or any other DCC system that can do programming on the main. And uh if it can do programming on the main for accessories, then you can just use the default address of 2044 and program CV 131 to a value of one.

[00:07:47]And that gives you the manual reset option turned on. If you want to turn it off, you just change it back to zero.

[00:07:54]So, CV 131. And this is all covered in the manual. They tell you exactly what to do in order to reprogram it.

[00:08:01]Okay, so I've got it set up. Now, what I'm going to do is I've got a metal screwdriver here. I'm going to place it across the track and create a dead short and you can watch what happens.

[00:08:13]Okay, you can see power has gone off to the track.

[00:08:17]We've got a blinking LED here on the circuit board and if you look right here, you can see that red ring here on the uh the LED on the push button is also blinking red.

[00:08:31]So, that's a great indicator that you've got a short and you know which block it is. Now, when I take this back off, you'll notice power does not come back on.

[00:08:44]That's the manual reset part. You have to push the button in order to turn it back on.

[00:08:49]And that's after you've cleared the short. So, you can see it's still blinking here. I'm going to push the button.

[00:08:57]It's on solid again.

[00:08:59]This [snorts] is on solid again.

[00:09:01]And now we have power on the track.

[00:09:03]Okay. So, it's worked exactly like we wanted it to do. Now, the important thing about that is that you don't have your command station or your booster that is powering this cycling on and off, on and off, on and off every few seconds and eventually possibly failing as a result of that. And NCE says, "Don't exceed 3 minutes continuous on."

[00:09:28]That's what this manual reset is for.

[00:09:31]Okay, let's take a look at how this works with the DCC Concepts now Layout Concepts IP-CB.

[00:09:40]Okay, this is the DCC Concepts IP CB circuit breaker.

[00:09:45]Now, these are currently out of stock, but they're on order. Should be back in soon as soon as they get a shipment from China. So, check with Iron Planet Hobbies in North America for the uh stocking status. And also, you can check directly with Layout Concepts uh in the UK to see what the status there is.

[00:10:04]Okay, so I've got it set up the same way. Power's in here, goes out to the track here, connected to this test track. Still have the little light on.

[00:10:13]And as you can see here, now I can tell you that this is illuminated. It It is red. I'll put my hand around it. Maybe you could see it better that way. Don't know. But it anyway, it is lit. I suspect they've got it set up that way for the current for a uh of a very low current LED.

[00:10:34]So, you might want to use a separate LED uh from the push button with this setup because that's not going to be satisfactory, I think, for most people to be able to see. You can see it in a darkened room or in a darkened area that it is lit, but uh let's see how it works. Okay, so and also, I have changed CV 64 to a value of one. And that means that the manual set reset is activated. So, let's see if it works.

[00:11:08]Okay, you can see power is off. Light's off here at the track. There's nothing lit up here.

[00:11:15]So, what I'm going to do is push it.

[00:11:18]And the light's on.

[00:11:21]That light's on. This light's on. So, it came right back. So, again, that will keep your DCC system from trying to keep restarting uh power on your track and prevent it from burning out. Okay, let me do this with the PSXX.

[00:11:37]Okay, let's give this a shot here. This is the PSXX circuit board and there's two of them here. And I've wired everything up to this bottom one.

[00:11:48]And we got power coming from the power cab into the unit here. Everything's green, so that's go.

[00:11:55]And then I've made all of these connections here on the bottom. And I will provide diagrams uh for you and I'll let you know in the description where those are located. So, this is the wire diagram for setting this one up. Okay, now as you can see we got power on the truck, the light bulb is on. Now, the different thing about this is it requires a normally closed momentary push button. The other two used a momentary open. Now, fortunately, this push button that I managed to get from China can be wired either way and it has the LED in it. Unfortunately, this is a 12-V LED or it's a 12-V circuit in here. I don't know if it's a resistor or a a regulator in there or what, but it somehow can take 12 V directly. Most of these boards are putting out somewhere around 5 or maybe less in the case of the IPCB.

[00:12:59]And that's why I'm getting such a dim light and why I say that if you need a brighter light then you'll probably want to install a separate LED on your push button panel for that. Perfectly I'm perfectly happy with the LED as it is. I just need to know whether it's on or off and I can see that even if it's dim.

[00:13:21]Okay, let's see how this is going to work. So, here we go.

[00:13:26]So, you can see we got this LED right here has come on.

[00:13:31]That tells me it's got a uh a short circuit. And you can see I've removed the uh I've removed my screwdriver, so it stays off. We still have no track power. You can see right here. Also, if you look real close, you'll be able to see, and I'll cut my hand here, you can see that that red light is on.

[00:13:54]That tells me that I've got a uh short circuit in that block. So, all I have to do now is hit that button, and everything comes back on again.

[00:14:07]But, it will not come on again until I push the reset button. It won't keep trying over and over and over again to do a reset. It will wait until you hit the button and turn everything back on.

[00:14:22]So, that's how easy it is. Now, the hard part here is everything has to be soldered. And these connections here that I've made, wait a minute, I'll show you, but I'm going to turn power off first. I'll flip this over, and you can see the solder connections I've made down here. So, they're quite small, so you have to be very careful with your wiring here that you do not short anything out. Just be very, very careful.

[00:14:50]And again, I am powering this 12-V LED here with 5 V, so it's very dim as a result. And that's a dedicated 5 V here.

[00:15:01]Well, that's a wrap for today's video.

[00:15:03]Hopefully, I've given you enough information and incentive to go ahead and create your own uh manual reset switch push button panel to protect your DCC system and give you a visual indication of which block on your layout has tripped due to a short circuit. So, give this a thought and you can put these together for a very small cost. Now, that's it for today's video, but I want to tell you a little bit about what's coming up because I do have something brand new to show you and that is this right here.

[00:15:38]It's about the size of my little fingernail and this is the newest Current Keeper 3 from the folks at SoundTraxx.

[00:15:47]So, we'll be installing this uh soon in a locomotive that I've just finished getting ready to put on the layout and we'll test out how well this little teeny tiny stay alive works with a sound decoder from SoundTraxx. So, come on back for that video which hopefully will be in a week, but I can't guarantee it.

[00:16:09]So, take it easy, have a great weekend and a great week and I'll see you here in a week or so with that review of the new SoundTraxx Current Keeper 3. Bye now.