re: MTH wiring

Is your wire heavy enough? What gauge are you using?

What do you mean by losing power? Are they slowing down? PS-2 engines have cruise control that will maintain the set speed pretty much regardless of track voltage, as long as its not too low. Need more info.  What's the tinfoil supposed to do?

Rod

I am using  16 ga stranded stereo wire.   The engines stop and shut down.

First silly question - copper is hot and silver is neutral or ground(black)  clear -hot,red   striped or marked-black - no crossed wires hopefully. it's easy enough to do with clear speaker wire.

Second silly question - do you have voltage everywhere?

Are the lock-ons equidistant from each other?

Choose two points equidistant from the lock-ons and isolate the center rail. You can use electrical tape over the contact on each track or the 40-1029 5" piece and pull the wire on the center rail. Divide the loop in half electrically.

The loops may be too long for good signal. I don't know your track plan, but the table size suggests 3 signal blocks would be good. About every 10 pieces of track after a lock-on. You need to isolate each block from the other by insulation the center rail. The common is common everywhere, no need to isolate that.

For now, try two blocks using the two lock-ons

Do you have a 40-1068-2 ground track or two on each loop or the lock-ons on opposite sides on each loop? This provides both rails with neutral  (black) and prevents any switches from blocking the common.

Disconnect two loops and get one loop at time running. get one running and then disconnect it and move to the next. Finally when all three run, connect the power to all.

Why are you wiring all three tracks to a single TIU output? Seems it may help to isolate the rails between the connections points. Also, I would wire to multiple TIU channels. Someone with Z4000 knowledge could tell you more, but I have each track run with a seperate power source and seperate TIU channel.

svrob95 posted:

I am using  16 ga stranded stereo wire.   The engines stop and shut down.

You are running 3 layouts off of one throttle thru on TIU port correct?

How many volts does the Z4000 read and what is the Amp load? I'd tend to agree with the guys above you just plum may be out of voltage if everything is wired correctly.

That is MTH track we see? The outside rails are NOT connected to each other with that IIRC unless you can insert a lock on from the opposite side.

First you don't have enough power lockons, second try using 14 gauge wire or you may smell a burning effect as the 16 gauge wire is too small for a Z-4000. Most track sizes are equal to 16 gauge wire so 14 gauge from your transformer will work better as well, then add 16 gauge wire for the short section from the 14 gauge wire to the power lockon.

Lee Fritz

At the risk of receiving dissent, I say that in a layout of that size, I would use, and always use, 14 gauge stranded wire, THHM type.  I also would not use just one transformer output and one TIU channel.  I do note that I often have 4 locos moving on a single channel, due to the way I run my railroad empire, and have no power problems

Thank you all for the great troubleshooting!  I'll be spending the next few days addressing your advice!    

If they just up and quit, that speaks to poor continuity in the track. You are losing power or ground somewhere. As was said above, more track feeds are needed.

Check out the wire run length spreadsheet below. If you refer to the 12 amp row (Z-4000's have 12 amp breakers), you will see that up to 21 feet runs of 16 AWG will keep you inside of a 2 volt loss, which should work just fine in DCS mode at 18 VAC. If your runs are longer you should go up to 14 AWG.

You didn't say if you are running DCs or conventional?

Rod

In addition to the good advice from others above, if you are going to be running a DCS system you should really consider getting the DCS Companion by ORG's own Barry Broskowitz. It explains wiring among other things to get the most out of your DCS system. It has helped me a lot since getting back into the hobby a few years ago and I still refer to is all the time, really a lot of good information. It's available from the OGR store in both digital or print copies.

Thanks to all,  I've got excellent, reliable voltage on all levels of track!  I added a 3rd lock on to each level and rewired with 14 ga.   In addition, each level has its own  transformer and terminal block using a star system for its separate TIU configuration!  Anyway, it's off to turkey at parents for a week, but sure feel up lifted thanks to great advice!   Happy Thanksgiving!