Fastrack Switch Throwing Slowly

What voltage are you feeding it?   Do you have it screwed down? 

Jim

Voltage is 18-19 and while is was screwed down removing the screw near the throw does not seem to help.

She's binding.  You may have to do a little adjustment... youtube it.  If that's not the cause, then the motor is defective.

I had similar problems. My fastrak switches are the older remote ones. Once it was a bad connection  in the controller and another time it was a bad motor in the switch. Its not hard to fix these things.  PROBLEM -IS---if its installed in a yard area with multiple switches and Ballast its going to be a huge NIGHTMARE  to remove the switch to make the repair and re install. Good luck. Nick

Fixed it.  I did have to pull the switch out.  I was somewhat misled by only having problems in one direction.  The issue was that the screw on the post that the arm rotated on was to tight.  When I was reinstalling I found I also had to be careful to not overtighten when screwing down.

White Pine,

   Make sure your switch is setting flat, this also can cause the problem you are having.  If you are using track power make sure the adjoining Tracks pins are touching the Switch Track pins correctly also. Sometime they can need adjusted so the adjoining Track pins makes proper connection.

PCRR/Dave

I know this is an older post but I also had the same symptom of switching slowly in one direction. Went through all the above recommendations with no success. While having the bottom off and checking things out with my meter, I noticed the two limit switches were wired differently - one had the blue wire in the center and the other the yellow wire. I checked another switch that operated properly and that had the blue on the center pin on both limit switches. I switched the wires and now the switch operates flawlessly.

This is just fyi for another possible fix for this symptom.

Wow. That is one to stash in memory. I guess it figures. The presence of discrete wires and components plus small production numbers precluding robot assembly means these things must be largely hand-soldered and hand assembled leaving opportunity for mistakes.

Lew

I have an issue where one O-72 FT switch (as part of a 4 switch crossover) just randomly switches from open to closed on it's own. Sort of spooky.

The other switches are fine. Sometimes it happens in rapid succession if I try to keep switching it back with the controller, but then it stops and does it again maybe 5 -10 minutes later. Switch is flat and not binding anywhere.

Any ideas ?

I assume by "closed" you mean "Thru" (straight) and by "open" you mean "Out" (diverging)? Look very closely at the "Thru" non-derail rail section as it may somehow be going to ground, maybe a tiny sliver of something metal. Could be something to do with the terminal block on the underside of the switch, something shorting between the ground terminal and the Thru  terminal. The other possibility is a gremlin in the circuit board..... 

Do you have the controllers electrically ganged (to throw each pair of switches straight or crossover)?

Lew

Yes on the thru and diverging. The switches are not electrically ganged.

I'll double check to make sure there's nothing in there to short it out, but it happens so randomly I doubt it.

I'll try to take a video tonight and post it tomorrow. As you can imagine, it's a little scary when running a train on each track. I haven't had an actual collision yet because I can hear it switch, but all of a sudden there will be another train on the same track.