On my layout when an engine goes through a crossing between two loops it shorts out in the middle of the crossing. I see sparks under the leading truck and the engine drops dead. I try to set the voltage between the two loops at the same but there is always some variation. The switches are ROSS with DZ-2500 controllers. As long as the switch is on the same loop there is no problem. This problem is recent and didn't have this problem before.
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Are the two loops on different power supplies? It almost sounds like an "out of phase" problem.
Make sure that you have not reversed the hot and common wires on one of the loops.
Here come the questions that I always ask:
Do you have a digital volt-ohm meter? Do you know how to use one?
Electric trains = electric problems = electrical trouble-shooting
Thank all of you for the advice. The transformer was not out of phase since it was feeding both loops. The problem was that the builder of the layout miss wired one of the loops so that power was out of phase on one of the loops. I switched leads on one of the transformer post set's and it solved the problem. I would have never thought of it since I assumed that the wiring was correct. Bad assumption.
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