Nothing particular here, just relating my latest repair adventures. I bought an O60 FasTrack remote switch just before Christmas last year. I don't even recall if it was advertised as GOOD, BROKEN, or UNTESTED (the last two being about equal.) When I fired it up, it would throw straight, but not to the turnout position. When I removed the 426,000 screws that hold the bottom plate on, I was greeted with a some messy looking parts - messy from glue, that is. See the messed up parts below:
Apparently someone had somehow broken the small rod off the slide bar (top piece) and decided that gluing the end of a tiny round shaft onto the main body of the part was a good idea. Now we all know you can't glue the end of a tiny plastic stick to anything and expect it to hold - but nothing ventured, nothing gained, so he did it. Admittedly, it was holding, but flexing badly each time the switch was thrown. In the process, he also got glue all over the swivel rail link, boogering it up. I got the replacement parts (thank you, Lionel!) along with a new rod carrier for good measure. All parts in, power on and the motor turned about a half rev and stopped - not jammed, just stopped. Click it again, another half turn and stopped. After 2 or 3 attempts (it varied) it would then throw to the opposite position, albeit not a clean, crisp snap. Got nothing when I tried to throw it the other way.
I swapped controllers and found that that the problem was still there, but at least it was now occurring in both directions. I swapped the main board in the switch, no diff. Finally I just put fingers on parts and moved them til I felt a slightly high resistance. Sure 'nuff, the shaft that the slide rod pivots on, had a thin, almost invisible film of CA glue. After scraping all that off, everything was now functional again.
Then I noticed corrosion on the center rail bus bar. Couldn't really see how it could have been water, so it had to be heat. I pulled a bunch wires out of the way, and found about an inch of the bus bar was corroded/rusty looking. Of course the wires laying on top of the bus bar were scorched (see pic again for wire segments) so I cut them out and spliced. With that repaired, I traced things back to find the source of this short and found one of the short sections of track that come with the switch had overheated an outside rail to the point where the rail had melted and sunk down about 1/16' of an inch. Sure appeared to be a catastrophic derailment short! I used my big Weller to warm that piece of track back up and remelt into the correct position.
Then I tried the original controller again and found that the controller had a defective pushbutton in the turnout circuit. Fixed that, and then tweaked the points, and finally a nice crisp throw every time and no derailments.
Switches are like a box of chocolates, ..... That said, the price was right, the parts were cheap, and I love a repair adventure! Good times all around.
Thanks for an interesting read and repair job.
