I will preface this by saying that I am a woodworker; I'm terrible with electronics.
My layout is done and I'm wiring the accessories before I begin with the plaster sheets and winter landscapes.
I'm looking to wire an old 1960s Lionel 452 gantry switch to an MTH 40-1028 activator unit that will be aux powered by my ZW transformer. My local train guy sold me the activator, tested my old Lionel 452 to assure that both lights illuminate, and he showed me how to correctly connect the gantry to the MTH activator. What could possibly go wrong?
I wired everything up, triple-checked my work, and turned on the power. Red light illuminated on the gantry. Odd, I thought, as my understanding was that the green was supposed to be the constant, and the light turns red when the MTH unit senses motion. I figured it would be a minor tweak of the "delay" and "sensitivity" dials on the MTH. Neither waving my hand in front of the MTH activator or running a train by it would cause the light to change. The instructions state that dialing the delay all the way up to "high" will yield 15 seconds before changing the light back--as the switch is hidden inside the mountain structure and the gantry is just outside of the opening it will pass through, I set it at just below "high" since I will want it to delay @10-15 seconds. Changing the "sensitivity" dial appears to have zero affect on performance; the only way I can get the MTH unit to "click" and cause the gantry switch to change colors is to physically pick it up and turn the dial with a small screwdriver from max to min to max again...sometimes it will "click" and change the color to green indefinitely, and sometimes is will click to green for a few quick seconds and then click back to red. Again, waving my hand in front of the MTH about 70 different times has caused the color to change only 2 or 3 times. Sometimes it will be red for 5 minutes of fiddling with it, and other times it will be green for a long time as well.
I'm trying not to get too frustrated on my day off in what is supposed to be a relaxing project that my young daughter is excited about. For those of you with expertise who have messed with one of these MTH 40-1028 units, am I doing something wrong, or is it possible I'm dealing with a defective piece of Chinese craftsmanship here?
Any/all advice appreciated. Thanks!
