Hello All,
I am a complete newbie father of a 5 year old who loves trains. We have in the past two years bought two lionchief starter sets (Pennsylvania flyer & a Thomas set). For this year, I told him that I'd build him a train table for the basement to run them on. I bought a bunch of new track, 7 new switches, a new power supply (GW-180) to build this. For the past month I've built the table and now I'm working on wiring the layout.
I am trying to understand how lionel fastrack remote control switches work. I've been playing with one of the switches and the GW-180 to understand how to wire it. I am confused by several things with this switch:
1. The switch came from the factory with the track jumper going between aux in and aux ground. This doesn't make sense to me when reading the manual, as it depicts the jumper going between aux in and "track jumper". However, when supplied with track voltage with the jumper in this position (aux in & aux gnd), the switch works.
2. The above confuses me, because I thought the point of aux in & aux gnd was to isolate the switch motor mechanism from the track rails. Where the switch track rails would continue to receive track voltage through the pins on each of the track from connected power tracks, and the switch motor would receive independent fixed voltage from the aux in / aux gnd?
3. I had originally connected the switch to the accessory output on the GW-180 (Aux in to B, Aux Gnd to U). When I did this, I measured with my multimeter on the center rail to outside rail on the switch and found it was giving me the 12 v from the accessory output. Which, I assume means that aux in & aux gnd are not isolated from the track rails?
4. When the switch is powered with 12 V connected as described above to aux in & aux gnd, it doesn't power on. The Switch doesn't function, lights don't turn on for the controller or the on switch itself. Is it defective?
In conclusion, it seems to me that if the switch is powered independently from the other connected track it would need to have isolation blocks on either side then?? How does this work if we ever get a conventional train, where the track voltage is variable for the train speed, it would hit the fixed 12 v accessory powered switch rails and speed off?
Sorry for all the questions. I looked around on here with search feature and couldn't find the answers I was looking for in regards to switches and usage of accessory voltage output.
Thanks!
Penn Flyer
