I think I have a short. It’s an older piece of track. O-31 curve. I’m running a 2026 and the 6440 passenger cars. My engine goes over this piece. Something arcs then the train trips the e-unit into neutral then trips the breaker of my Z-1000. Fairly certain it is a short, how can I fix this? Or do I need new piece of track?
thanks!
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The center rail of your piece of track has three insulators underneath the rail. One above each tie. Bend the tabs to remove the center rail and replace the insulators with new ones. You can use a piece of thin cardboard. Unless you can locate the one that's bad you might as well just do all three.
Sometimes the insulators have just slipped out of correct position. Look at them, if one or more is off center bend the tabs and reposition.
Definitely sounds like a an insulator issue as described above. An alternative fix would be to cut a small piece of black electrical tape to place around the installed insulator.
Ok that makes sense. This is an older piece of track for a “Christmas layout” I put together from track I had laying around. It was put together for Christmas in July at our camp ground. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Simple and to the point. With some plasticville added too
@Rich Wiemann posted:An alternative fix would be to cut a small piece of black electrical tape to place around the installed insulator.
Stick with cardboard, or the original fish paper.
The glue on electrical tape makes a sticky mess when it gets old, oozing out and around.
Mike
It comes up to insulate an outside rail to trigger signals and switches. I have used heavy paper and over time I have had failures where a hole developed in the paper and shorted. The original insulators were fairly heavy duty. I dont know if you can still buy the originals, but years ago they were separately available.
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