So I’m a newbie; I posted a week or so about some problems I ran into with some older but NIB accessories I had purchased from eBay…the culvert loader and unloader was just a case of me not buying the right track adapters and freight car; the gantry crane seems to be a victim of grease/belts. So I shelved those for the moment and decided to get some easier to deal with accessories that I stumbled upon on Amazon. I found a few of the newest versions for sale and most were cheaper than retail or the usual online prices. So I bought:
Multi-gate grade crossing
Plug and play Auto Gateman
Plug and play oil pump
Plug and play fake news stand
I had also just purchased a nice 2324 Switch Tower from eBay
So I chose the plug and play versions because I figured they would be the least amount of hassle to set up. I bought three of the plug and play activator sets for the lights/action accessories and a multiport plug and play power track for the oil pump. The grade crossing does not require any special track (might be how they try and justify the price point)
Once I received everything, I started to mess around with them to figure out where on my layout I wanted them. I tried the grade crossing first; very easy to set up since it included all the necessary track. Hooked it up, tested it…and only one gate moves the other one does not. Lights on both work. Messed around with it for about a half hour trying it in different places on the track, swapping out the included cut track pieces with some of my own, etc. Gave up; did some research and found that this piece has a bad rep and others have had the same problem so decided to exchange it. When I bought it, it was the last one in stock on Amazon and it was “only” $135…now its magically back in stock and its $181 so I couldn’t do a straight exchange so I decided to return it and just get the auto crossing 2-pack instead.
Then I hooked up the Auto Gateman to test it out…the first time the train hit the activator track the door opened partially and then shut…subsequent tries got no action at all. Lights were constantly on though as expected. So I swapped out the track pieces in case I had bad track but same reaction.
So now I’m getting frustrated; I take the Fake News out of the box to try it…and the PNP cable is loose in the box. I had to remove the screws on the bottom to reattach the cable to the circuit board; not sure if it was just never attached or came loose some how in shipping. Tried it on the track; again the light is constant on, but when the activation happens I can hear the motor but the figures don’t move. I cannot move them by hand either. So now I’m beginning to suspect something is wrong with my setup; no way three accessories in a row can be defective.
So I think maybe I’m a victim of voltage drop. I put a meter on my transformer and verify that it has 12-18vAC. I try the newsstand again with turning up the voltage; still no movement. Then I setup a test bed with just a terminal track, the activation tracks and the single accessory so that the transformer is just powering one accessory and I can rule out any bad connections or drops. Same performance. Then I take the pigtail I had bought to convert the Switch tower to plug and play and wire it up and test the Switch Tower and it works perfectly. Then I add the multi plug PNP track to the test layout and try the oil rig and it works fine. So the tower and the rig work but the other three don’t. So in my mind I’ve ruled out power drops, bad connections, bad activation track or any weird shorts.
So what gives here? Am I overlooking something? I could buy that the crossing gate has a history of being crappy; I could be suspicious that the Fake News was a return since the cable wasn’t attached but having to accept that I also got a bad gateman makes me wonder: Does Lionel have quality issues? Does Amazon sell return or bad Lionel items? Am I overlooking something? Does this hobby hate me?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Michael
