Fastrack

[Anonymous]

Anyone getting educated in Lionel Fastrack? I'm running about 100 ft of track with 5 remote switches and the Locos seem to have a little struggle at the switches unless I'm at a good speed.......Any ideas? Also ..I have another 80 watt Tformer from a lionel set.. Can that be used with the existing 80 watt or is it time to trade up to higher watt? Thanks for any input....Dan

[Big_Boy_4005]

More feeders to the track maybe? It sounds like there may be a weak electrical connection in the switches. Do you have good power on both sides of the switches? You shouldn't need more transformer, unless you have more trains.

[Anonymous]

Thanks BigBoy Will check connections....all is screwed down so I was seeing what the options were...Thanks again

[Dave Farquhar]

I'm hardly an expert on Fastrack but my first guess would be voltage drop, either due to too much track and not enough feeders, or a poor connection somewhere. More feeders will solve the first problem and provide a workaround for the second.

One way to isolate some problems is to run the train at pretty high speed for a good while, then go around feeling the track. The track that's giving higher resistance will be warmer.

I don't know if either of these will help you but they're probably worth a shot.

[eZAK]

You need a good multi-meter to check you track at various spots.

As suggested above, add feeders were nessessary.

You could use both 80w trans if you split your track into blocks.
After phasing your trans isolate the center rail at two points creating blocks controled by each trans.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to everyone for helping....will start checking...Dan

[Kooljock1]

Dan,

I've found that for perfect voltage constancy I run 1 "hot" lead to the middle rail every three track connections. In the case of FasTrack, this would be every 30" for standard track piece, but every 90" if you use the extended straights.

Even though FasTrack switches use LED's for lights, remember that each switch has a LED in the switch, and two in the controller, so that might be eating up a small amount of power.

The nice thing about FasTrack is that every piece is a "lock-on" piece. Use 16 gauge wire, and knock yourself out!

Jon [8D]