I bought this in April 2023 from my local hobby shop and used it briefly to make sure it worked before putting it away to retrieve later for my train around the Christmas tree in December 2023. Worked fine and put it away in January when I put the Christmas stuff away. Got it out again last month to use again and it worked fine for a few weeks and suddenly it went dead. Thought I had a short somewhere and started taking stuff off the track, etc but the green light on the transformer would not light up at all - even after totally disconnecting it. DEAD. I spent a lot of money on this less than 2 years ago and now it doesn't work. I plan to ask the hobby shop about it, but what are my options? It seems like it's just out of warranty (or is it?) and past a normal return period, but it probably has less than 10-20 hours of run time on it. Grr.
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If your hobby shop isn't responsive, would contact Lionel. Sometimes they make exceptions to warranty repairs. If not, just write it off to bad luck and find another hobby shop.
My guess you be you did short it and so hard you blew the internal fuse- especially given the lack of the green pilot LED indicator.
The other failure mode of no green LED is total board failure due to killing the microprocessor- also caused by a short and failure in the older TRIAC controlled versions.
The case is held together with security bits (triangle).
Both the new fanless versions and the older version with fan have this safety fuse inside.
https://ogrforum.com/topic/701...73#77311805190809273
External fast acting fuses or breakers not only protect your trains- but also the transformer and expensive control electronics.
Can you recommend the needed fast-acting circuit breakers as described above? Where are they best mounted?
They go between the transformer and the track in series. You can select amongst many. Here's one that's relatively inexpensive:
https://hennings-trains.shopli...circuit-breaker.html
This issue has been discussed multiple times on the forum:
My advice is don't buy another CW-80, they're junk!
Pick up a postwar transformer and one of the circuit breakers mentioned above. It'll be running when your grandkids have their kids.