Need Help With Two Trouble Spots

Oh, one thought I have is that the small sections I needed to use to "fit" don't "play" well together.

Richard, it could be high resistance track joints. Have you measured the track voltage within the problem area with an appropriate load applied there?  If so, please provide info on the measured load applied for testing and voltage measurements at the source and at the trouble spots.

Will you also please show where your track power drops are located in relation to the close-up track view you've provided?

You describe the issue as "the engine" is the slowing/stopping and sparking at the problem area.  Which locomotive model number (or numbers if more than one) are doing this?  Does the issue happen when the train is traveling in either direction?

Thinking about this a bit more, since there are a lot of track joints and the center rail electrical path through every 1-3/8" section has 10 friction/interference connections from one end to the other, and this combination has many short sections of track, my suggestion would be to connect a series of hot and common jumpers from one switch to the other at the opposite ends of the trouble section.  For the short sections with no terminals, the jumpers would need to be soldered to the rail tabs under the roadbed.  If you don't already have something similar, my recommendations for where to connect hot (red) and common (black) jumpers are as follows.

Here is a detail showing where I'd suggest making solder connections on the 1-3/8" sections.

Richard:

Questions -

1. As mentioned by Steve do all locomotives or just a few have the problem at spot 2? Perhaps the locomotive you are using is too big for the curve?
2. Do the inner and outer loops have separate power supplies? You may have a voltage difference or out of phase transformers?

Hey @Richard Whipkey....

What caught my attention about your posting was the comment you made about sparking.

As Joe mention in his post; with AC it's very easy to mix up power leads and and put track sections "out of phase" with each other.....especially if your track is split into blocks.

How do I know? I actually did this when I connected my Coal Tipple to power! I accidentally switched wire leads to the tipple itself. Everything worked fine until a gondola was pushed onto the tipple. As soon as the gondola's wheel bridged the outer rail gap between the track leading to the tipple and the coal tipple itself things went haywire. And yes.....I saw sparks too.

I suggest you double check your power wiring to those track sections and make sure you didn't switch the leads some where.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for all the good suggestions.  I'll get to work.

I agree with Joe's and Junior's suggestions about polarity and possible multi-transformer phasing.  Checking those would be a good first step.

My two transformers that run trains are both 180W bricks attached to two Legacy Powermasters.  I have a ZW running only accessories, lights and operating tracks.  And I have a 80W BW powering my block controllers.  I had phased them all, but I'll check again.

Its probably not the bricks though there have been posts stating some bricks were reversed wired (if I remember correctly). I did a search but could not find the post however I assume a phase check should see that.

Best to start looking and disconnecting power/ground wire pairs to the track and see if the problem goes away. Might be a crossed wire pair somewhere.

Question - are the inner and outer loops electrically isolated from each other? If so is this isolation at the two spots?

Yes they are both isolated.  I will check phasing.

If everything else checks out, I would solder together the two pieces of track at each spot where you are having issues by running wires between the two pieces to the tabs underneath each piece - one center rail to center rail and one outside rail to outside rail. You can rout out a small hole at each end of the track pieces with a Dremel and rotary sanding bit to allow the wires to pass from one piece to the other. That will eliminate any continuity/connectivity issues.

You could also do it to the entire small straights that you have between the switches.   

You could also try using the female .110 connectors, but I like the solder method to eliminate any continuity/connectivity issues.

@Richard Whipkey posted:

Yes they are both isolated.  I will check phasing.

Richard - please keep us posted. This is an interesting problem
Joe

I sure will, Joe.  I 've been very busy lately and haven't found the time to look at everything yet; but I intend to do so ASAP.  I'm sort of thinking that I may have a brick wired wrong from the factory and they are out of phase.  I need to investigate how to determine if they are and how to correct it.  Therefore, my first step is to check their phasing, then the other two.  Secondly, I will check all of my power leads for polarity issues.  As I mentioned in the first post, I treated my entire system with No Ox ID and have only "cleaned" my two engines that do not have traction tires as they could be run over the No Ox before the grease from it was wiped down.  Both of these engines are early TMCC GP's with Pullmor motors and Magnetraction.  I doubt that they are too large for the curves in the trouble areas as they handle other similarly sized curves with ease.  They both exhibit the same issues at the problem points.  My other 7 TMCC engines need to be cleaned as well.  I couldn't use them on the track before the No Ox was wiped down (which I completed last night).  I also need to clean them and apply No Ox to the non traction tire wheels.  Then I can run all engines in tests (2 non-scale GG1's, 4 non- scale K4's, an ABA PA1 and an RS1).  Lastly, I will solder track wiring as suggested and perhaps even add a few more power drops.

All of this will take some time.  I do all my own wiring but my son-in-law does my soldering and I have to wait for him to do that part (I quit soldering as I have hand tremors).  I will post results at each step.

There are posts somewhere on this forum discussing switching wires inside the brick. Best just look at the dates on the bottom of the bricks you have, list them here and hopefully someone with more knowledge than me in this matter can tell you if there is an issue. The dates are usually at the bottom and 'engraved' so are hard to see.

I finally returned to the problem earlier today.  I started by powering up both loops via my two 180 watt Powerhouses connected to two Legacy Powermasters.  (see attached Portion of Control Panel JPG). Also, please ignore the temporary jumble of wire connecting power to the Block Power Controllers as I had removed the wiring I had fixed in place with this temporary wiring in order to check each one of them seperately for response to the TMCC controller.  They will be put back in place now).

I then connected the center rail of each loop near the trouble areas with my voltmeter and found a whopping 36 volts!  Obviously, I had a phasing problem or a polarity problem.  I found a previous post on this forum that indicated the miswired bricks were produced up to 2008.  My bricks were produced in 2019 so I doubted it was a phasing issue.

So, then I checked all of my power leads for crossed wiring from the bus wires.  There were none.  (By the way, I had built my power drops based on every 5-7 connections, so I felt that there were enough drops to provide power through these sections with many short pieces.)  I was sick at the thought of tearing up track to ensure that no connections were crossed at the connections to the welds or tabs under the track.

Before I did that, I decided to go back to the drawing board and search more relevant posts.  I just randomly decided to check the power again with my voltmeter at the Powermaster posts.  It read 36 volts.  It was then that I happened to notice that the wire to Powermaster 2 had the black ground wire on the right hand post and the red power wire on the left hand post. (see Powermaster 2 Connections JPG attached).  I glanced over to the Powermaster 1 connections and found that they wee wrapped so closely together that I really couldn't tell which wire went to which post.  When I actually began to remove the wires for inspection, I found them to be opposite to the wiring on Powermaster 2.  I had created my own phasing problem!  I changed them (see Powermaster 1 Corrected Connections JPG attached) and everything works perfectly now.

I felt so stupid at my rookie mistake.  It was then that I remembered that in connecting some accessory wiring, my son and I had recently temporarily disconnected the wiring to the Powermasters.  One of  us had evidently reconnected the wire errantly.  Live and learn!  A whole week of worrying and searching for nothing.  The good news is that I can now move forward.

Thanks to all who responded to my post.  You all really did help me find my problem.

@Richard Whipkey....I wouldn't sweat it and you have absolutely no reason to feel stupid. The simplest mistakes ARE by definition the hardest to find.

I'm a software developer from way back, and I can't tell you how many times I had to ask other people to look at my code to find a bug. Its the same thing with wiring layouts. Some times you just need to "walk away from it". And when you came back to it, it hits you right between the eyes😁.

Glad you found it. Have fun running your trains!

Richard - excellent

The reason they call them mistakes is we didn't intent to do that, so they're all pretty stupid!   Welcome to the club, we have a ton of charter members.

Thanks all.