lionmaster challenger tender shorts out

Gerald, you can find your solution in the following thread: https://ogrforum.com/...-036-fastrack-switch

In a nut shell what we found was that the floating wheels on the tender had enough side to side movement to touch the diverging routes center rail. Putting a piece of small electrical tape in the right spot resolved the issue.

Matt ,As soon as i read your post i seem to remember reading a post quite awhile ago about putting a piece of tape on the track ,but i don't remember what it was about ,however i did what you suggested i put a piece of tape on each switch & so far it seems to be working OK ,i ran the engine back & forth probably 10 times slow & at times fast ,& i didn't see any sparks & no tripped breaker  { so far ] ,but one strange thing did happen when i put the first piece on ,after i did that i was backing the engine up over the switch & it was trying to throw the switch ,but it wasn't able to do it & i couldn't figure out why it was doing that ,so i decided to try the tape option again & i put a piece on the common rail right opposite the other piece of tape ,i just took a guess to see what would happen ,well to my surprise it seems to have worked ,at least so far ,do you or anyone else  know why the tape on the common rail would work?, & why would it try to throw the switch in the first place ?

  I just looked back on my own post & i was the one who had the same problem before no wonder it sounded familiar ,what a DUMMY i am & the solution was the same to put the tape on ,i must have taken it off when cleaning the track without even realizing it ,however i will be paying close attention to it next time i clean the track ,but that still doesn't tell me why the switch would try to throw when i was backing the engine up , anyone have any idea ?

The only place you need tape is where the common rail intersects the hot rail in the turn (see red tape below). The size depends on how far that tender is moving, you can get away with a large piece of tape there. I'm not sure why the switch would throw while you're backing up.

FWIW, I see Fastrack switches occasionally firing for no apparent reason.  One interesting example is when I add a DCS locomotive, I have one switch that will suddenly switch about 10% of the time. 

Matt  I checked again today & so far everything is still ok ,as far as the switch throwing when backing up i put a piece of tape looking at your picture showing the red tape i put tape to the right of your red tape ,it is next to that spear shaped piece ,i think it is called the frog ,not sure if i am right on that & that's what stopped the switch from throwing ,at least for now & to what John said ,on the other switch ,i do hear a click when the engine starts going over the switch ,but it doesn't actually throw the switch .I mentioned in my response above that i had this problem before ,it was on a different loop & the tape is still there ,i now have the challenger on a different loop than that one.

You can typically see the arc marks where the actual short occurs on the switch, that should give you a big clue where to add the insulation.

I tried the tape method and it worked for a bit, but the tape eventually wore out. In the end I ended up replacing the metal floating wheels with plastic ones. Problem solved.

John ,i didn't have to look for the arc marks ,i could see the sparks without any problem & that's where i put the tape & so far so good ,also i can see only one side of the switch the other side is up against the wall & i can't see that side ,but i will  keep what you said in mind for future reference .