need help wiring my layout

[Anonymous]

Hi ya. After trying to rebuild cars, I came to model (toy) trains hoping
its going to be cheaper, I'v always loved lionel, ever sence my grandpap
gave me his old set. Anyways I bought me the Polar Expresse set for my
christmass layout. I'm having trouble getting the engine to reverse and stop in
netural when I press the direction botton on the cw-80 transformer. I have a pair
or 022 switches and a 494 beaken on the accessories side. when I remove
the power lead for the fixed voltage to the switches, the engine works great. But then I hook up the leads, the engine acts like the e-unit if turned off. Is this the
way its desined to work, or do I have something wrong. I have the acc volt at 12.0. I'v tried to adjust the voltage, no effect on operation. The only other transformer I have is an old Type S but the whistle dosent work that well (the engine just speeds up) I'm using all tubeular track.
I love the way the new stuff works, SO much smother operation than my old
2055 and 2020 postwars.
sorry for a long post.
thanks for any help.
Chris

[wrmcclellan]

c-burke9,

First of all welcome back to the toy train hobby and to the CTT forum.

As you suspect, the problem appears to be related to the fixed voltage you are running to the 022 switches. You did not state precisely where the 022 fixed voltage was coming from.

To answer your basic question - no this is not what is supposed to happen. The electronic e-unit should work fine regardless of whether the 022's fixed voltage terminals are connected or not.

I assume from your post that if you disconnect the 022s from fixed voltage and let them run via track power that everything works fine with the electronic e-unit.

Can you provide a bit more detail about how and where the 022's are getting their fixed voltage from?

Regards,
Roy

[daan]

My guess is that the fixed voltage "leaks" to your track somewhere, giving the e-unit just the amount of power needed not to fall into reverse or neutral. Electronic e-units use much less power to stay in direction then the old coil-types.
If you feed the coils in your switch through an external voltage, make sure that the coils are only connected to that transformer, and not to the track in any way. (so power feed and power mass both isolated from the rails) That should be enough to keep the power seperated and the e-units working ok.

[Anonymous]

I'm using the acceories output on the cw-80 to feed the fixed voltage to the
track. For the time beeing, I hooked up my old type s, everything works but the
wistle in the tender, when I hit the button, the engine just speeds up. could I use an old whistle controler and hook it inline with the track to work the whistle?

I did some more reserce on this transformer (cw-80) somthing about it
not using a common ground internal, and the digital output on the track side
makes it not work right with the switches.... when I hooked the cw80 up backwards the switches work fine on the fixed voltage, the engine just wont reverse. (make using the milk car kind of hard)

[daan]

Now it's going to get though.. A new type of engine uses a can-style motor, which runs on DC (not alternating current). The whistle button adds a DC current too to the tracks. In the old wistle tenders the relay which activates the blower works on DC and the train motor uses AC (alternating current.. Duuhh). If you add DC to the track and the train motor is a DC motor, it works as an extra voltage for the trainmotor too. The trains speeds up because of that.
Since I only own wistle tenders working with an AC locomotive I don't have that problem, and to be honest, I don't know how to solve it, though I recon that the soundboard should recoughnize it as a wistle command somehow.

If the cw-80 transformer doesn't use a shared earth terminal, you best don't lead the switches earth via the track. Make the coils in the switches with a separate earth. It could be that the sinwaves (AC current comes in waves) from your trainoutput and accesoires output don't match. This results in an amplified or shifted sinewave, causing problems like you mentionned. It really is hard to explain, but it comes to a point where you think your train is stopped, but in reality the train only lack's one of the two poles it needs to turn. As said, an electronic e-unit only needs a fraction of power to stay on it's direction, and the capicitors on the e-unit board can provide the other pole to the e-unit which the engine is lacking..
I'm not sure if anyone understands what I mean, but in my job we call this a "floating earth" and it's causing all sorts of problems with electronics.
Bob (Lionelsoni) HELP!! (he knows of this stuff a lot AND knows how to explain)

[Anonymous]

Thanks, belive it or not, I somewhat under stand that somewhat. I gave up on the cw-80 for now, least with me type s, the switches work and the train stops and reverses.
Right now i'm thinking that whistle controler in the type s transformer may have something wrong with it. When I put on my old 2055 postwar with it's air whistle, it does the same thing, speed up when the engine is running. When the engine sits in netural, some times the whistle will bow, some times the lights just get brighter (lights in the pass cars). I have an old external whistle controler (seperate from the transformer) I want to try it and see if it helps out.

[Anonymous]

Have you tried flipping the wires to the lockon? The DC that is being put out might have the wrong polarity.

[eZAK]

c-burke9,

Here are a couple of things to try,

On the cw-80 connect all comons together.
Check with volt meter before connecting to track.

Have you serviced your whistle motors?

Check the type S for DC output.
Maybe a bad rectifier disc.

[lionelsoni]

Daan, the locomotives with DC can motors (almost) all have a bridge rectifier feeding the motors from the AC voltage from the transformer. This makes them look not too different from the traditional universal (AC-DC) series-wound motors.

The speedup when whistling is a feature built into the Lionel transformers. The transformer switches in a small extra winding to compensate for the small amount of voltage lost by rectifying part of the AC to get the DC needed to operate the whistle relay. Unfortunately, different locomotives need different amounts of compensation for this; so Lionel seems to have tried to play it safe by overcompensating a little. Thus it is pretty common, and normal, for a locomotive to speed up when the whistle is actuated. The whistle control can be handy even with a whistle-less locomotive to give it a little boost if it needs it to get started!

The external controllers do not have the advantage of that boost winding. They will typically slow down the train rather than speed it up.

Traditional locomotives recognized either polarity of DC as a whistle signal. New electronic locomotives distinguish between a positive center rail for whistle and a negative for the bell. If you don't get anything with either polarity of connection to the transformer, and the locomotive will whistle with another transformer or with an external controller, it does probably mean that the copper-oxide rectifier in the transformer has failed. You can replace it with a run-of-the-mill silicon rectifier diode, if you don't want to go to the trouble to get the original part, which is long obsolete for any other electrical application. It's worth at least a look inside the transformer--it might be just a broken wire.

As for the switch problem, when you put in the fixed-voltage plug, it's supposed to disconnect the center rail from the switch coils at the same time that it provides you a connection to those coils. Is it possible that the plug on one of your switches is not disconnecting as it should?