Good evening, everyone.
A few weeks back I posted a question concerning the loss of the fixed voltage 2 output from my TIU. This meant the loss of one of my two tracks, but with out a replacement TIU, I felt it best to continue on through the holiday season with the one remaining track on Fixed voltage 1.
Everything was running normally, but on Christmas eve things came to a crashing halt. I was running my Pennsylvania 2-10-4 steamer and a string of Atlas boxcars. After 30 minutes or so of running, it seemed the train would slow down slightly in various areas. This continued for 10 minutes or so and then the engine slowed to a crawl with engine sounds starting to come out of the speaker. Shortly thereafter the train came to a complete stop.
Prior to the stoppage, I had not touched the transformer or handheld. When I picked up the handheld, it was reading 35 mph(where I had set it) and I tried to take the displayed speed to zero. It moved to 34 mph and stopped. I removed the batteries and restarted the handheld, it went back to 35 mph and would only move to34 mph. I could not return the handset to zero, it was stuck on 34 mph.
I checked the track voltage and it was zero, I checked the output from the transformer and it was 18 volts. There is an in-line fuse and it had continuity.
I tried to start up the train again on Thursday and Friday, with the same results. A call to Justtrains was Just-in-time, as the TIU and handhelds were now in stock and one is on its way to my home.
Here is where it gets weird. This morning I decided to take the TIU offline and check the internal fuses, but since it was under the platform and difficult to remove, I though what the heck, let's try it one last time and to my surprise when I applied the power to the track and started up the handheld everything on Fixed Voltage 1 was working normally (fixed Voltage 2 is still down).
Does anyone have any ideas what happened here?
Thanks for your responses and I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.
Bill
