MTH PS-1 Engine Operations?

Maybe your track voltage was to high coming out of reset...should be around 10 volts.

Remember that PS1 engines start up in reset.

It may be. Since they use a battery, or in your case a BCR to keep from loosing the sound from a minor power interruption. In the case of your toggle it only cuts the power to center rail. It's AC, so current to the outer rail is actually hot too. The reversing switch may actually cutting power to both the center and outer rail. Conventional engines (without battery backup) need only to see an interruption in power. Now I might be wrong, and if so I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will chime in.

You have to bring the power up slowly to no more than 10 volts and wait for the double-ding.  Then you can interrupt power briefly to move out in forward.  If you slam them with higher voltage, you'll indeed be in reset and waiting for programming commands.

Doesn't work that way.  If center rail is cut there is no continuous source so the reverse unit should sequence. 

I toggle my PS-1 engine out of yards all the time.  You need to remember to let it start up, voltage needs to be less than 10V, and of course you can't have the engine across the insulated section otherwise the toggle doesn't kill power.

Any of the above could have prevented your engine from responding.  G

Hi Folks,  

I want to thank everyone for your replies.  I think that the problem was that the voltage was too high on the track.  I didn't know that I needed less than 10 volts on the rails for PS-1 engines to come out of reset.

I normally have about 17 volts when I am operating the layout in conventional mode.  This works very well with Lionel and Williams engines.  In fact, most Lionel and Williams engines will not start without at least 15 volts on our club layout.

The reason we use the toggle switches on the club layout is that the Z-4000 transformer is about 25 feet from the yard and the toggle switches.  

I will try it tomorrow and see what happens.  

Joe

Joe, My PS-1;s did the same thing till I reduced voltage to 8-9 volts on startup, I marked the voltage on transformer handle with whiteout so they always start up ready to rumble I use a ZW here.

Rod

The voltmeter must be off, or you have some serious voltage loss on the layout.  My PS-1 Premier steamer will pull passenger cars at 8-10 VAC at reasonable speed.  At 15VAC I don't think it would stay on the track.  I would think Williams would respond the same, unless the motors were wired in series.  G

Yes I believe it is. My lionel, even with diodes in series, take off pretty good at 5 volts. One of the drawbacks of DCS Remote. Ist notch is 5 volts. My Williams GP9 was fast at 5 volts. I rewired that one in series. At 15 to 17 volts all my engines with the exception of MTH would be in "Back To The Future" territory.