Curious electrical problem, with a paired set of Master and Slave Lionel 022 turnouts.

Your anti derail function depends on ground (outer rail) connection and the wheel set to short out and act as a switch. This is the same thing as the switch controller doing it, but the difference is more components in the circuit and thus higher resistance.

It's probably not the wire.

It's probably the condition of the rail surface, the wheels, the axle and one thing not talked about, the crimps of the rails inside the switch. Again, in simple terms, your drive strength is a function of resistance. You clearly have higher resistance in the circuit that fails. Solve that resistance and the problem goes away. It could be loose track pin fits to the rails of the switch, incorrect insulator pin placement on a common rail that then sees higher resistance.

https://ogrforum.com/...45#40004360093384045

Again, the fact it wrks fine with the switch controller stand, but then fails on using the sensing anti-derailment rail- given the anti-derail knowingly has more resistance easily explains the failure.

The manual says in the event of irregular or one direction operation only, the trouble may lie in the sliding contact assembly. Examine the riveting of the springs to the insulating base and the base.  While you have the top off, maybe a cleaning of the contacts would help.  Are you 100% sure that the 14V you have plugged into the slave switch is getting to the solenoid, since if it was not, the track voltage would be powering that switch and giving you a false assumption.  A shot in the dark as a suggestion, the control lamps are lit by current passing through the solenoid of the direction that is not selected.  Is there a difference in brilliance depending on direction that might indicate a voltage issue in the whole thing?

@Mannyrock posted:

Hey Folks,

Long and short:  the automatic non-derailment switching feature on the Slave Switch will not automatically cause the rails of the Master Switch to swing over 100% of the way.

And again, when I work the controller lever, both switches automatically  work great?

Any ideas about what is causing this problem?

Thanks,

Mannyrock

The difference between the control lever working and the anti derailment not working is resistance.

The switch controller has 3 wires, common (AKA U or I described as GND) and the 2 wires for either direction. The controller shorts one of the direction wires to common to activate. Since the controller is designed as a proper switch contact with low resistance and positive solid contact.

VS

Anti-derailment sensing rail, which is connected to the specific direction. The thing is, this is a switch that depends on your rolling stock wheels to short this sensing rail to the common (U) connected other rail. Depending on how well that specific rail is tied to common (U), how clean it is, how clean your wheels are, how much weight or pressure, how clean the wheel to axle is, these factors all determine the total resistance seen between the sensing rail and the U common rail.

In your case, you are attaching 2 switch motors and thus 2 switch coils worth of current now has to flow across this anti-derailing sensing connection. That's 2X the current across the wheels and axles as they roll across this to ensure both switch coils fully actuate. Since the near switch coil is right there, it switches because it sees less total resistance than the remote far away switch coil connected via longer wires. As a note, yes, the wire resistance comes into play but I'm of the opinion even thick heavy copper wire may not solve this issue since the primary resistance is the rail to wheel to axle to wheel to rail resistance.

You may not care if running only postwar non-electronic equipment but each time you depend on this switching 2 high current 022 switch motors via you anti-derail sensing, you are possibly sending a massive inductive kickback voltage spike in that general area. Again, I would bet money, with the lights off, there is a decent sized spark or sparks when you activate the switch via ant-derail sensing of the wheels carrying all that current of 2 switch motors at the same time.

Might it be possible to extend the anti-derailment sensing rail so you have additional wheel sets to help complete the circuit?

Have you tried oil on the moving parts of the sluggish switch?

Wow.  Thanks for all of the info.  Lot's of things for me to check into.

Arthur, yes the first thing I did was to pull the switches, thoroughly clean them inside and out, and squirt them with the can of CR whatever.  After reinstalling them, they worked even snappier when the control lever was thrown, but the problem of the incomplete rail throw of the Master Switch continued as before.

I actually thought from the beginning that it was a resistance issue, but didn't have the education to figure it out.  I know that they are both receiving the 14 constant volts because their lanterns are bright when the track throttle is on zero.

I'll try to work through the problem, and if I can't solve it, I guess I'll just put in a separate controller for the Slave switch, put the two controllers side by side on the control board, and somehow "tie" the two controller levers together so they operate in tandem.  After that, the non-derailment functions will have to work independently. 

Thanks again,

Mannyrock

Move the controller to the other switch and try to replicate.

Also, to be clear, based on your description, there is no master/slave relationship between your two switches, they are equals/peers. Drawing a schematic of your wiring will show this.

Thanks for the info Rob!

Instead of moving the controller wires to the second switch, I think I can test it the same way by just tripping the second switch by using a thin metal screwdriver to touch an outside post to the interior post.  I can test this on each outside post.

Also, I forgot to mention, that in doing my initial testing, I disconnected all of the controller wires from both switches, so that there was no controller operation, and powered up the transformer so that they were both getting the 14 volt constant flow, and then tested the non-derailment feature on each switch independently, on both track forks on each switch.

The non-derailment feature worked perfectly on each switch.

Thanks,

Mannyrock

Hence by disconnecting both the controllers you removed some of the resistance. This was identified by Vernon Barry and others here as the source of the problem in their initial posts.

Thanks Modeltrainsparts!