1.375 fastrack kills power on my train engines

Hi Dana,

The wires remains if you are using it as a regular piece of track.

 

You remove the wire to isolate separate power districts, place a switch in place of the wire to kill power to a siding,yard stub, or roundhouse track.

 

The wire keeps the center rail connected. You will see a small space in the rail. It's very effective, as you have discovered. Put the wire back and you'll be good to go.

I've had sections of Fastrack go bad for no apparent reason.

Seems very odd at only this piece of track. Pictures?

Checked accessory wiring and it is correct.  Disconnected wires from power sourcesource separately and crossing gate was still
down.  Must have a short somewhere??

Well, at this point a multi-meter would be the tool to use to find where the problem is located.

It's easy enough to get the wires reversed when connecting to the terminals on the bottom of FasTrack.

I suppose an easy check is to confirm that all of U or common wires connect only to the outside rails. The crossing gate uses an isolated out rail (common) to activate it.

Check that you haven't reversed the one of the two isolated outside rail sections. The cut rail should be on the same side.

 

Other than that, we are guessing. You will need to describe your wiring in more detail or post a diagram.

 

if you follow the instruction sheets, everything should work.

Could there be different power drops on either side of the 1.375" section with the jumper out?  If they were phased wrong, that will kill the power in a heartbeat!