okay. basically, what i've done right now is get a temporary track arrangement on my layout to test out the operational possibilities. I'd had everything wired up and the layout was running. There are currently 4 turnouts.
Over the past 2 days, I had begun and just last night finished hooking up my SPDT switches to the frogs of the 4 turnouts. I had also finished my basic little wiring setup using a Terminal barrier strip.
My setup was as such: Tech II 2800 > Terminal Strip > Track Feeder bus/Frog Bus. I kept the track feeder bus and frog bus separate, because I thought that would help with trouble shooting.
Well... today I hooked everything up to the Tech II for the first time. Everything had worked fine when I just had the track buses connected to the power pack. today, nothing ran. I kept getting the overload light.... So, figuring that it was just too much wire for the power to run through, i disconnected the frog buses to see if that made a difference. Nothing.
I was thinking of snipping all the frog leads, in case there was a short somewhere on one of the SPDT switches, which I had set to the Center Off position. I'd wrapped each lead to the SPDT switches in electrical tape to help get rid of possible shorts by having the wires accidentally touch somehow. I didn't want to snip the frog leads, though, because that would be extra work if that wasn't the problem.
So, I unhooked the power pack, and then just hooked it up to a single piece of flextrack using a pair of terminal joiners, and everything ran fine. I'm just confused now, because even though I hooked the track buses straight to the power pack like i'd done before, nothing worked. However, I had installed one last pair of feeders at the far end of the layout....... so I'm thinking that this might be the issue, because the 2 wires needed to get there were fairly long, and the wire I'm using is either 18, 20, or 22 because i bought the 3-pack thing from Radio Shack of green/black/red solid wire. I just don't remember which it was that I bought.
If I replaced the track and frog buses with heavier guage wire (like 12 or 14?) do you think that would solve the problem? I'm going to go back and first disconnect that one last pair of feeders I hooked up and see what happens.... if nothing works then, then I'll snip the frog leads.
Oh, and right now, I'm using terminal joiners for everything, that I made myself. These aren't the problem as the layout worked the last time I ran it, before I created this wiring system that doesn't work, lol.
as annoying as this is...... I'm not really *** off or anything. I was totally expecting it to happen. Mr. Murphy won't ever let anything be easy, and I went in completely expecting it to fail, haha.
The gauge of wire has nothing to do with it .... a short is still a short no matter how heavy or light the wire is.
Probably, one of the biggest things you have working against you is the fact you wired up EVERYthing and then connected your power pack. You should get in the habit of test running things as you go along .... install the buss and a few feeders - still working ? - add some more. By doing it this way, it will be easy to narrow the problem down to what you did last right after it WAS working fine.
Having wired everything up without testing as you go, it's easy to get a couple wires interchanged and not realize it. Take a deep breath, then head under the bench-work and begin tracing every wire one by one making certain it goes to where it's supposed to. If it does, then head top-side and begin to carefully check all the turnouts for frog gaps that aren't insulated or even a stray piece of scrap wire that may have fallen between the rail closures.
It can be mind-numbing sometimes, but if there's a short, there's a reason for it .... you just have to find where it's hiding !
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
If I understand you correctly, you powered up the track bus, all ok. You then hooked up frog bus, not ok. You disconnected frog bus, still not ok.
Do you have a reverse loop that you might have thrown the switch on? Are all the frogs indeed isolated?
You might try hooking up only one wire from the power, and using a multimeter or even a light connected to the other lead and probing the track and frogs. If all the frogs are disconnected there should be no power. The rail should have power on one side only.
Greg
Mark understated one important element - check each wire (if possible) or wire set as you go. When it doesn't pass, you know where your problem is. This is a collary of some of the following principles upon which the School of Hard Knocks is founded:
1) There is never enough time to do the job right the first time. But there is always time enough for a second time.
2) Each increment in space or time that a quality check is removed from the original work results in 10 times the rework.
But that's water under the bridge now.
Before tearing your wiring apart, I would vacuum every square inch of the topside of your layout. Remember, your rails are essentially 2 bare conductors fairly closely spaced looking for an excuse to reach out and touch each other. Some common causes of hair loss when hand laying track are (don't ask me how I know this, my receding hair line is testament enough):
If it's not one of these, I suspect your frog wiring. I don't like the sound of a separate "frog bus", but it could be perfectly OK. The frog bus should be 2 wires, same as track power wires, that are tied to the outer terminals of your SPDTs. The center terminal of the SPDT switch goes to the frog lead. None of the frog leads or center terminals can be linked to each other. The outer two terminals tie to track power - BUT you have to get these wired to the correct polarity. Just one set reversed will cause a short circuit, quite possibly even with the switch in the center off position, depending on how your wires are run.
My next suspect after the frog wiring is incomplete isolation of the frogs with gaps.
hope this helps
Fred W
Kadee coupler gauges are now made of plastic. For the older ones, paint them orange/yellow/other bright color. Much easier to find the short.
Go back to the last configuration that worked, and go from there. Sometimes I add feeder wires to the bus wires with the power on. If something is hooked up wrong, I know about it right away.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com
What's a "frog bus"?
How can you have one bus for the frogs? If the frogs are powered (and need a buss) then they change polarity depending on which way they are thrown. If all the frogs are connected together, that would be a dead short right there as soon as you put two switches facing in opposite directions.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
here's how I had everything wired up:
I disconnected the frog bus from the terminal strip... I had also connected the track bus directly to the powerpack, and not through the terminal strip; this is what makes me believe that the last set of feeders I put in, which have a pretty long wire for each track, is whats causing the problem. I'll find out more tomorrow.
Read what Tom and Dave said. If the overload light is lit, you have a short.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Greg,
On the MRC power packs, you are aware that they use a thermal overload and it takes as long as a few minutes to reset. If you got the short, disconnected the frog buss, then tried it again too soon, you would still get a short indication on the pack simply because the overload hadn't reset as yet, not because there was still a short.
As crazy as this sounds, don't get too frustrated with this because it will be a good learning experience for you. As others have said, be very methodical and use the "divide and conquer" approach--isolating one segment at a time and making sure it works before moving to the next section. You'll get it working again! Jamie
PS: I hope I can heed my own advice once I start laying and wiring track in the next few months
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DeadheadGreg wrote: here's how I had everything wired up: I disconnected the frog bus from the terminal strip... I had also connected the track bus directly to the powerpack, and not through the terminal strip; this is what makes me believe that the last set of feeders I put in, which have a pretty long wire for each track, is whats causing the problem. I'll find out more tomorrow.
Did some more thinking about your situation.
First, short circuits have nothing to do with wire run length or size of conductors. Too long a run with too small a wire (too much resistance) can mask the existence of a short circuit, but it can't cause it. The excess resistance can keep a circuit breaker from working by limiting the current through wire heat when a short circuit occurs.
Next, a key element is missing here - how are your turnouts wired? Are the points isolated from the frog and each other, and tied to adjoining stock rails (recommended)? Or are the points electrically connected to the frog, and changing polarity when thrown (normal Fast Tracks wiring)?
The 2nd case must have the frog contact (your SPDT switch) switch at the same time as the points move. If the points or frog contact are leading/lagging the other, you will automatically have a short circuit while the 2 are out of phase.
The fix for the 2nd case is to isolate your frogs from the points, so that you have a 1st case scenario. In the 1st case, the points and SPDT being out of phase with each other do not generate a short circuit until a metal wheel bridges the frog isolation gaps.
Allowing the frog polarity to be wrong for the direction the turnout is thrown is never a good thing. And is the reason why the frog polarity contact is almost always connected to the turnout throw mechanism. By connecting the frog polarity to the movement of the turnout points, you keep the frog polarity matched to the direction the switch is thrown.
For trouble-shooting your current problems, I recommend:
1) makes sure frogs are properly gapped for power routing at the very least (gaps in all rails connecting one frog to another frog, gaps in the rail between any feeder and a frog). Totally isolated frogs are preferred, but may require rewiring of your points, depending on the present situation. If you are using SPDT toggles not connected to the turnout throw, you must turn off track power before throwing the SPDT and moving the points. Track power can only be turned back on after both the points and SPDT are thrown.
2) disconnect all SPDT switches from the frog bus. You should have no shorts now. If you do, you haven't put in all the gaps required at the turnouts. Reconnect the SPDT one at a time. You may have to reverse which frog bus wire goes to which side of the SPDT to eliminate the short circuit. While testing, make sure the position of the points and the SPDT are properly synchronized throughout the tests.
These 2 steps should solve your problem. Remember, that until you mechanically link the SPDT to the point throw mechanism, you will have to do keep the 2 manually synchronized at all times, and track power must be off while you do both actions.
On the terminal strips I used top and bottom terminals are the same polarity all the way across. If I wired mine as you showed, it would be a dead short! Could it be that simple? I use two sets of terminal strips for each line, inside and outside rails.
I have a MRC 2500, are you running your turnouts off the variable DC side that power's the rails? My 2500 has 3 sets of terminals on the back, Variable for track, Accessories for lights, turnouts etc, and Fixed DC power.
Good luck, Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
This isn't going to help at all...but it sure makes insulfrogs attractive, problems like this. Is the OP using engines that have only one axle pick-up? If not, he should consider leaving the frogs unpowered. (...if the frogs turn out to be the issue).
A correction for Fred, if he is still reading. Fast Tracks turnouts don't route power. They have some of the design characteristics of turnouts that do, but the fact is that the points rails receive their power not from contact with the stock rail (although they also can get it that way), but their principle power comes from their adjacent stock rail. In a Fast Tracks turnout with a properly gapped frog, all traveling rails are powered. Since power is provided to the rails, and the rails are soldered to copper cladding on the PCB ties, any other metal in contact with the cladding on the same side of the filed gap in the cladding will also be similarly energized. So, even if there was somehow a miss at the points/stock rail interface at the throwbar, and the miss left the points rail unpowerable as a result, that rail will still get power from at least one more PCB tie, and that will be the tie to which the points rail is soldered just prior to the frog gap. As it happens, the points rails also slide along several other PCB ties, so there is even more opportunity to get power to them.
As a result of these characteristics, regardless of the throwbar position, both points rails are always energized. It is only properly guaged wheelsets and properly spaced points rails that prevent shorts.
-Crandell
I see what you are doing with the "frog bus" now. I had just never seen that particular wiring arrangement. Most layout I've seen have the frogs powered from the track bus.
First buy a voltmeter from Radio Shack. Makes it much easier to find shorts.
Disconnect the track bus. Connect the frog bus. See if there is a short.
Disconnect the frog bus. Connect the track bus. See if there is a short.
If one has a short and the other doesn't, that isolates which bus has the problem. Then start checking feeders.
If both do then there is separate problem on both busses or there is a short between the busses. Disconnect both and see if there is a short between the busses. If there is, then someplace you have a bad piece of track, somewhere a frog is shorting to the track. Start throwing switches to changing a switch position gets rid of the short.
selector wrote: This isn't going to help at all...but it sure makes insulfrogs attractive, problems like this. Is the OP using engines that have only one axle pick-up? If not, he should consider leaving the frogs unpowered. (...if the frogs turn out to be the issue).A correction for Fred, if he is still reading. Fast Tracks turnouts don't route power. They have some of the design characteristics of turnouts that do, but the fact is that the points rails receive their power not from contact with the stock rail (although they also can get it that way), but their principle power comes from their adjacent stock rail. In a Fast Tracks turnout with a properly gapped frog, all traveling rails are powered. Since power is provided to the rails, and the rails are soldered to copper cladding on the PCB ties, any other metal in contact with the cladding on the same side of the filed gap in the cladding will also be similarly energized. So, even if there was somehow a miss at the points/stock rail interface at the throwbar, and the miss left the points rail unpowerable as a result, that rail will still get power from at least one more PCB tie, and that will be the tie to which the points rail is soldered just prior to the frog gap. As it happens, the points rails also slide along several other PCB ties, so there is even more opportunity to get power to them. As a result of these characteristics, regardless of the throwbar position, both points rails are always energized. It is only properly guaged wheelsets and properly spaced points rails that prevent shorts.-Crandell
My mistake, and thnk you for the correction. I thought Fast Tracks were continuous from point right through the frog. I'm glad to hear they are gapped (I assume somewhere in the closure rail) with points always of proper polarity (tied to the adjacent stock rail through the PCB ties). The BK turnout kits that Greg may have used definitely come made with continuous point/closure rail/frog. What he actually has installed remains the question.
Even in the '70s, I was following Jack Work's turnout wiring recommendations (made in April '63 MR) to isolate the frog and power it with a contact.
I suspect Greg's problems are coming from a combination of frogs not being fully isolated combined with polarity mismatches when attaching his frog bus to the toggle switches.
Another issue: his decoupling of the frog polarity contacts from the turnout throw may cause additional shorts; shorts that may not show until attempting to run rolling stock over an isolated frog of the wrong polarity. The problem will show sooner if the frog is not isolated. I know from experience - I had a DPDT toggle switch to power the frogs (the other pole was going to be for the turnout motor someday), and moved the points with my fingers for quite a while. I had to do both steps before running a train over the turnout, or I would have a short circuit.
Actually, right now everything is just Shinohara turnouts. This is all just temporary to test the track-plan arrangement.
The SPDT switches I ahve are Center off, so that before I throw the turnout, the switch is put in the center-off position, then switched to the correct polarity after the turnout is thrown.
Just, the one thing that keeps making me think that its the one last set of feeders is that everything worked fine before I added that last bit of feeders. Since everything worked fine, I just went ahead with wiring everything up the way i did.
I have a lot of time tomorrow after class that I'm going to use to investigate. I'm also going to replace the cheapy SPDT switches i'm using now with Atlas Selectors, because with those, its nearly impossible to create a short unless you actually cross wires somewhere or something.
To the person who mentioned the thing with the Tech II resetting after a short... would it still not work if i tried it too soon after having the overload light come on?
I think the key word has been found .... Shinohara !!!
Have you insulated or gapped the rails beyond the frog ? Shinohara turnouts are live beyond the frog, THROUGH the frog ! As long as all the turnouts are facing away from where the power is supplied to the rails, it "will" work .... however, install one turnout with the points facing away from the feed wires, you get an instant short.
You will need to have a double gap on the far side of each frog, and then add feeder wires beyond where these gaps have been cut to supply the rail beyond the turnout
I'll bet that's where the problem lies !
yeah no i have the frog rails gapped, i know how they work.
You guys are missing the point, lol. Everything worked BEFORE I did my crazy wiring deal. Up until that point, I had the track bus connected right to the power pack. Then, since everything worked (I would hold the frog lead against whatever rail I needed before i had hooked up my SPDTs) I installed the last set of feeders, and then hooked everything up to my terminal strip.
When I go home, I'm going to try it again later. If it doesn't work, I'm first going to snip off that last set of feeders i installed, because they have the longest wires going to them.
DeadheadGreg wrote:If I replaced the track and frog buses with heavier guage wire (like 12 or 14?) do you think that would solve the problem?
If I replaced the track and frog buses with heavier guage wire (like 12 or 14?) do you think that would solve the problem?
Deadhead.
12 & 14 guage wire would be quite adequate if you are planning on rewiring your house. To use it for wiring a main bus on a temporary or even a permanent layout is WAY overkill unless the length of the layout is about 100 feet or so long. Even at that, as others have suggested, the guage of your wire won't cause a short circuit. Your problem lies somewhere in the way you have connected your wiring.
Good luck in locating the problem.
Blue Flamer.
Absolutly a no brainer!
As mentioned, reverse the last set of feeders you installed.
YAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did it!!!
hahaha.... Well. Everything works PERFECTLY now. I don't know what the deal was, but I disconnected the last 2 feeders from my track bus, and everything worked fine with my Tech II. Got a little bold, and hooked the track bus to my terminal strip and then the Tech II to the terminal strip. That worked, so I decided to hook up my frog bus, and everything was fine. Hooked the last 2 feeders back up (after cutting them a good 8 or so inches shorter) and everything was fine and dandy. Almost.
I was having problems with one turnout. For whatever reason, whenever the engine crossed onto it, it would stall. And what was REALLY weird is that when I turned the throttle up more, I could actually HEAR the current going through the turnout... it was this crazy weird buzzing sound kinda like what you hear near super giant power lines and transformers. Very strange. It was even doing it when I had the points set correctly.
Anyway, after fussing around with it and not figuring out how the hell it could be shorting out, I just said "*oops, paint spill* it" and took it out. I had another RH #6 that I'd soldered a frog lead to, and this time I got daring and decided to just solder feeders right to the rail instead of using the terminal joiners that I'd made. So I put the new turnout in, hooked the frog lead up to the SPDT, hooked the track feeders into the bus, and voila. Everything was fine.
I think I may have been shorting everything by having the switches in the center position, because before I'd hooked the new feeders back up, I set the switches to the right polarity for what the turnout was thrown for.
So yeah, everything works fine. Its cool, too, because I accidentally created a couple blocks by wiring some passing tracks as if they were stub-end sidings. So I can actually run more than one engine on the layout using just one cab. Way cool.
For everyone getting into building their layout or just getting started with wiring and whatnot, buy Andy Sperandeo's book "Easy Model Railroad Wiring" or whatever its called. This book was all I needed to learn how to correctly wire up everything.
DeadheadGreg wrote: For everyone getting into building their layout or just getting started with wiring and whatnot, buy Andy Sperandeo's book "Easy Model Railroad Wiring" or whatever its called. This book was all I needed to learn how to correctly wire up everything.
Since you have the book, some good advice would be to wire your turnouts up as suggested in the book rather than the <ahem> unusual way you have done so. That is certainly not what is recommended in the book.