Weird TIU Problem

You are the second one in few days that report a TIU  than double  the input voltage  in your case it's more than double. 

Wow, that is interesting.

Silly question. Are you reading voltage on a volt meter?  The voltage readings taken using PS3 engines are sometimes way out of wack. my PS3 reads close to 30 volts on a 15 volt track. Just an idea....

he mention no load, so it should means without engine 

Some non-sine waveforms can drive digital meters crazy, especially the cheap ones.

John has a very good point. I carry a cheap analog meter for backup due to this.

Also, with no load a very bad connection will still real good volts, just at very low current.

You still can't run an engine on it since the engine will eat the volts X current and get "not enough".

18V at 3 amps (light engine load) is 54 watts. Will pull the heavy freight but not fast.

18V at 0.5 amps (bad connection) is .9 watts - not gonna move an engine by itself.

The rest of the power got burned crossing the bad connection, thus that connection will be hot.

Often there is a factor of estimation in what reading one should get when using a piece of test equipment. If the reading is way out from what was expected the reliability of the test quipment comes into question. It is a known fact that the accuracy of volt meters can be affected by the shape of the imput waveform.

Al

Ben,

You could have an additional power source feeding the yard.

We're you wearing the proper aluminum foil hat? 

Barry

Thought that first   Maybe an out of phase source but that wasn't the case  Measured at TIU with only one feed and output disconnected.  This was a fully operational line before Sunday.

I did use another members meter and am not sure what the quality of that one was  I was too lazy to go get my Fluke.  Will retry this when I get Back

@Greg

Cmon Greg you know I have the right hat on

As opposed to the Legacy Hat

Nice hats guys, but you still must appreciate the older cab-1 hats.

Ben,

Since the TIU is physically incapable of increasing voltage beyond what comes into the inputs of the TIU channel, there are only three possibilities:

1. The TIU is getting more voltage into the channel input than you believe it is
2. The TIU is being backed with higher voltage into it's channel output
3. The meter is reading the voltage incorrectly.

There isn't a fourth possibility that I can see.

Input was 19 volts,  Output was disconnected  nothing on the line  I think I go with the meter  Like I said it wasn't mine  I know mine is a high quality meter

What kind of power source was delivering the 19 volts? As others have pointed out, even a good quality analog meter can give weird readings if the power supply is not delivering a plain sine wave. I was the one who reported the voltage out of the TIU being 32 volts from an input of 16. Input was coming from a Z-750 through the controller. A friend who is both a factory trained MTH service tech and some kind of retired service engineer for IBM advised me never to power a TIU with any kind of non-sine-wave power source (i.e. Z-750 controller, CW-80, K-Line Rail Chief, etc.). The Z750 brick is fine with the adapter cable, but not running through the controller. 

Thats funny   I retired from IBM after 32 years and am a Certified MTH tech too.  We use all Z4000's 

I run DC power with no problems.