So I was running my trains and suddenly POP the circuit breaker on my MTH brick pops. Tried resetting it but that's not working. I'm assuming there's a short somewhere. Question is how do I determine where? Is my only option to pull up every single piece of track that has a wire running to it? Kind of hoping there's an easier way since that would probably take a few hours.
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Most shorts are caused by a piece of equipment shorting somewhere. I would start by taking equipment off the track one by one to see if that eliminates the short.
Another easy cause is a piece of foil or some other kind of metal shorting. You could have a piece bridging between two rails. Try checking for debris or a screw driver across the rails.
We had a short at the club when a plastic insulator failed.
Sometimes two wires touch at a junction box, etc. The bottom line is look for easy causes first. It is usually something that can be easily fixed.
I would say your last resort is to pull up track.
Joe
wELL, MR. MOOMAN, MADE A SUGGESTION, to me when I had the same style
thread, about a month, ago. Purchase a cheap multimeter, which I did, I was
thinking Okay, how do 8 post wire connectors suddently aquire a grinch. Slowly'
worked off that all post were fine ( they were), broke the track up in 4 segments
and begin piecing together (all this is before the purchase), connected each piece.
back and check, get to the VERY LAST PIECE OF 054, 4 month old curve section,
and notice it was extremely HOT, took it off, and replaced, what a headache, but
back in biz, and I took my NEW multimeter,around the track to test , perfect 18 volts
all the way around.
I have every run of track on it's own block toggle. When I get a short I just shut off all the toggles then bring them back up one at a time. The short will be isolated to a relatively small area.
When I once got a short with all toggles shut off I found a loose screw in a tight grouping of d.p.p.t. toggles on one of the panels.
Very straight forward.
If you are running a good sized pike with just a couple of feeders I would first cut the layout in half electrically to find which half has the short. Then cut that half in half to find the quarter with the short. Then cut that quarter in half again......get the picture?
When you do discover the short DO NOT just put the cut wires back together. Run a toggled feed to each isolated portion so the next time it will be easier.
IMO, lots of folks have been fed a bill of goods in that with any command control you only need a simple pair of wires to run their RR.
T'aint so. The fewer blocks you have the larger any short finding will be.
I am working on an RR right now with about 1700' of track & 95 turnouts and anytime there is a short it takes one to two minutes to find the trouble spot.
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