Lionel deisel #6-34732

I had a similar problem.  Mine occurred because the wheels  would short on the center rail.  Make sure that rail is properly centered.  Try a thin piece of tape on the sides of the center rail.

Marty

Marty,I'm not sure which wheels you are referring to, only the rollers touch the center rails,could you give me a little more detail?

Get down close to the switch, if you can, dim the lights and see if the wheels are making contact with the center rail as they go through the switch.  See if any sparking occurs.

Marty

Just a shot in the dark but check your track joint on the side of the switch that loses power. I'm not sure if a fastrack switch needs power at both ends to work correctly, but with the breaks in the rails it may. You might want to pull the track apart so that just the very tips of the male track connections are still inserted, then gently crimp the female rail ends and center rails just behind the pin tips.

Poor connections on fastrack sections is an occassional problem and can be exacerbated by the weight of a traveling loco. The interlocking roadbed gives a false sense of a tight track joint even though the rail connections are a bit loose.

I don't see any sparks so far, but i seem to hear a slight click as the engine goes over the track, what i can't understand is if there is something wrong with the switch,why doesn'y it effect any of my other engines? I will continue working on this tomorow,i may wind up buying a new switch to see if that works.

The wheels on this engine might be a little different width and as a result they hit the center rails when crossing the switch. The tolerance there is somewhat small and this has happened quite a bit over the years. I would try insulating the center rail where the outer rails cross it as others have mentioned.

Ron

I got back to work on it today, i tried tapeing the sides of center rails,still have same problem,plus when i put the engine on either track 1 or 2 & power up those loops it starts up in conventional mode i have 4 seperate & independent loops this very frustrating it seems that the loco isn't getting the signal on 2 of my loops,i'am to aggravated to do any more work tonight ,so i will try again another day. I am starting to wonder if i will ever figure this out i will keep you posted.

Well i tried again with this engine, still no luck so i tried putting it on tracks 1,3,4 then i powerd up each loop and the engine would not respond until i addressed it by it's ID #,then i put it on track 2,& as soon as i powerd track 2 up the engine responded without me even addressing it by it's ID #,next i desided to move the switch on the power master from conventional to command,then i powered up track 2 & the engine did not respond until i addressed it by it's ID #,i can't understand for the life of me why this is happening,none of my other command engines that i put on track 2 respond this way any suggestions as to what is going on?