Short circuit protection, fuse, circuit breaker, current limit.

Protecting against short circuits

Also:

Incandescent Lamps. Automotive turn signal lamps are a good type to try. These have to be chosen so that the maximum usual current in the section protected by the lamp does not light the lamp.

When a short occurs, the lamp heats up and lights. The resistance of the lamp goes up when this occurs, limiting the current. Once the short is gone, the lamp cools and allows normal operation to resume automatically. The lamp's light also provides a positive indication of trouble, if the lamp is placed where it can be seen.

Fuses. You must test to see if the fuse you select will respond quickly enough to keep the DCC system from going off-line first. (To protect the fuse, of course...) Sized correctly, these may do the job, but replacements will cost you $.

Circuit Breakers. These have a respectable initial cost, and again you must test to see if the model you select will respond quickly enough to keep the DCC system from going off-line first.

Raychem's "PolySwitch Resettable Fuse." This device offers the possibility of a compact and accurate means of protecting against shorts. It has a "hold current" which it is guaranteed to sustain, and a "trip current" at which it is guaranteed to trip. After tripping, it resets automatically once the short has been cleared. The RXE and RUE series have trip currents which are twice the hold currents. Models in these series can hold up to 3.75 and 9 amps respectively, which should be adequate for most command control systems I can imagine. Cost averages $1.00 each from Digi-Key.

My father often put a standard incandecent lamp in series with the supply. He would select a bulb that was rated at about the maximum voltage and amperage the supply was to deliver and the bulb would light ONLY if the supply was shorted. A cold lamp fillament has a resistance much lower than when glowing. Manufacturers are required to make it at least a 4 to 1 difference, but most are 10 to 1 or so. Bulbs can also be operated at below the rated voltage to change the resistance offered. As shown in the chart below, if a bulb is opperated at half its rated voltage, it will still consume about 69% of its rated current, produce less than 1/10 its normal illumination and last about 4000 times as long. So a 10V, 0.017A bulb in series with a 5V signal, will, when shorted to ground, supply about 450 ohms of resistance limiting the current flow to 0.011A and when not shorted will have a resistance of about 45 ohms.