American Flyer switch wiring help

[kwstudz]

Hi, 

I am pretty new to the world of these trains.  I am trying to automate everything, but I am having trouble with the switches.  I have the DC transformer with the 15V, but I do not have one of those switch boxes.  No matter how I wire it, it seems to be shorting.   I have had the black on the base, and put power to either the red or green, and it shorted.  I tried the black and the green on the base, and put the power on the 15V and it shorted.  Same thing with the red and green swapped in the last scenario.  Then I tried both prior scenarios with the base and power flipped.  
Can someone please help explain the proper way to wire it, or if it always shorts.  Thanks

[stebbycentral]

So if I'm reading this correctly you are trying to operate (perhaps test?) a Flyer turnout with out using the associated switch controller?  Your first problem is that these switch controllers are momentary contact devices.  Like with most HO switches, if you apply constant power directly to the turnout you will only succeed in burning out the coil.  The second issue is that Flyer transformers are AC not DC, though I'm not exactly sure that makes a difference here.

With the switch controller there are six wires.  A four wire pair (Y, B, R, G) going from the controller to the turnout, and a two wire pair (Y, B) back to the transformer.  Yellow is postive power - usually attached to the constant voltage post on the transformer.  Black is power return, or negative, which is attached to the "base" post. The four wires going from the controller to the turnout correspond to the colors on the posts of the turnout.  Again yellow is postive pole, black is negative, and red and green directional control.  I think what you want to do is disregard the yellow post on the turnout (it's for power to the light bulb), connect black to black, and then touch the yellow lead from the transformer alternately to the red and green posts.  The switch should throw. AS I said, if you connect the lead permanently it will burn out the coils.

I am assuming that you say the switch is "shorting out" because it's tripping the breaker on your transformer.  It could be that the problem is not in the switch, but that the current draw is too high for your transformer.