My new Southern Consolidation No. 630 steam engine won't run over a crossover (45 or 90 deg.) without stopping dead. A quick bench test indicates that the center rail pickups are making contact with the engine motor, but apparently can't maintain contact when running over a crossover. My other engines don't have this problem. Is this a common problem with the Consolidation?
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Spring tension of the pickups downward is lacking? My first guess would have been that one of them is disconnected, but you checked that...
Classic issue with pickup spacing. For small locomotives with closely spaced rollers, I typically run a single wire tether to the tender and use those rollers to increase reliability. I also add a 2A trip PTC in series with it to protect it against derailments.
The third set of drivers back are insulated from ground. This issue has been reported to Lionel by me. I am waiting for Dean to get back to me. Is your crossover a Lionel product? My layout has many switches and none of them are Lionel. John, this engine has three rollers under it. The Jury is still out on spacing.
Worst come to worst, run a two-pin tether and share the wheel power if wheel spacing is an issue.
The crossovers are Lionel Fastrack. I also have a smoke issue with this engine, which is under warranty. I have reported both problems to Lionel Service, and will wait to see what they say.
A tether between the engine and tender pickups sounds like a good idea if pickup spacing is the issue.
I ran a temporary single wire tether between center rail pickups on the engine and tender, which helped but did not completely solve the problem of losing contact over crossovers. I then ran a two-wire tether connecting both center rail pickups and ground on the engine and tender. This seemed to solve the crossover problem. However, I have a couple of reverse O36 curves which cause the engine to derail. I will try to fix these track problems; otherwise not use the Consolidation on this portion of the layout.
Well, I doubt the tether will fix the derailing issue. 
FWIW, I found the earlier Lionel TMCC Consolidation to have issues with O36 curves in some configurations. They say O31 in the product description, maybe they should have tested. it!
Update: It turns out that pickup spacing, etc., was not the primary cause of both problems (losing contact over crossovers and derailment on certain O36 curves). I finally noticed that the engine-tender connection was putting a little upward pressure on the engine, especially when pulling a string of cars. I adjusted the drawbars to reduce this, and this seems to have eliminated, or at least greatly reduced, the problems. The pilot truck occasionally derails, and there could be some restriction it the swing of the pilot.
cjack posted:Spring tension of the pickups downward is lacking? My first guess would have been that one of them is disconnected, but you checked that...
Ah ha! 
Time for that power tether. I did that to a couple of my smaller steamers, problem solved. I just did it for another customer's TMCC LionMaster T1 Duplex. It's a fairly large locomotive, but it only has two rollers space about 4" apart! With the tether in place, I can run over a 10" taped off center rail, no problem at all. 
Mine also had drawbar issues, but it didn't cause stopping on switches, the tender's wireless tether was pointed at the ground instead of the locomotive, so it wouldn't of even gone with the locomotive if set in motion.
I've been running some tests myself, I have run the engine by itself without the tender but mine still seems to stall on switches, but its not the electrical footprint, something seems to be making contact underneath the engine causing it to stall, hard to tell what it is though.
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