Troubleshooting my midsize DCS layout. Recently switched all turnouts to aux power. Suddenly getting erratic locomotive behavior-lurching, stalls, shutdowns (in the middle of tunnels!), etc. Unplugged the power source and ran locos with only the track power on. Much smoother operation. What's weird is that at a couple of spots, all the turnouts flash their lights briefly-yet they have NO power. Thoughts?
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Do you by any chance have one of the two going on:
- Is turnout power passing through a TIU channel?
- Are the Common terminals for your transformers for track power and turnout power connected (good thing) but possibly not in phase with each other (bad thing)?
Either of the above can and typically will cause problems.
What kind of track switches? What's the aux power supply?
Layout is lionel fastrack. I was able to isolate the sections of track and turnouts that were causing the problem. Although I couldn't see anything wrong, I rewired the turnouts and the power drops, swapped out a few sections of track and bingo, problem solved. Still not sure why-lol. One other symptom was my illuminated cars would go dull then bright, and make a slight buzzing sound. Ran everything for an hour straight and no problems. Barry, I don't have the common ground between the track power and the aux power, but will do that this evening. I know how to check for phase so it should not be much of a problem. Still, I am not sure how I fixed it! Thanks for the replies!
Shackdaddybass, if you ever use what you originally used here as a title in a post again, your posting privileges will be rescinded.
We don't talk like that here.
Shackdaddybass,
Now that Rich has straightened out your language problem, I will tell you what probably happened to your FasTrack layout. More than likely you not only were incorrectly wired, you may also have a bad piece of FasTrack, shorting things out. Rewiring just slightly and removing your questionable track looks to have cleared up your problem. Keep a close eye on your switches for a while, you may have a faulty switch problem also.
PCRR/Dave