Let me just say in advance that I have been at the RR hobby since I was a youngster and just recently became a card carrying member of the USA Medicare team, but my intro to scaletrax has not gone well. Usually through the process of elimination I can trace back and find a simple solution to the common electrical problems such as electrical shorts etc but I am at my wits end with my current problem. I recently made the decision to build my new layout using MTH Scaletrax mostly because of the low profile more typical of real life rr and the rather inexpensive costs. I am at the stage now where my tracks are all layed out and swicthes in place ( not wired just yet ), and I started to install the ScaleTRax Lock-on ( which consists of a track connection that includes one red wire along with two black wires). Having only ever used the typical Lionel Lockon or the RealRrax lockons the ScaleTrax was alittle different. I spoke to a Train Hobby store in town and he said just double up the two black wire to the transformer and red to red. Since I have approx 12 of these spread throughout my layout decided to head to Lowes and purchase many of the plastic Splice Tap connectors which seem to be easy to install. I ran a two wire 18 guage wire from my MTH terminal which was hooked into my Z400 MTH transformer around my layout and then went about hooking each scaletrax lockon onto the wire using the splice tap connectors. That process , although tedious seemed to be an easy.
My problem is that when I put an engine on the track and powered the z400 up to make my maiden voyage around my layout, the red overload light came on and nothing from the engine. Since scaletrax and the lockons are new I am looking for some help from anyone on the forum who can help explain in some plain and simple language what I need to look for as a solution. I cleaned all the track, double checked the wire connections and everything seems ok. After working to install this scaletrax I must say that I am not a fan of the small metal connections on ends of each track. Man it is not as easy as the old tube track. I guess that is the tradeoff for the nice scale look etc. If anyone can help I would certainly welcome any ideas? Thanks in advance.
