Has ant one have an auto reverser go bad? I have an MRC one that is 3 years old and worked fine last Saturday but quit working last night.The set up is an oval track with a turn out at one end of the oval on the front and back side. The track from these join another turnout which leads to a staging yard. A train can go OK up one track but shorts going on the other one. I think the auto reverser gave up. System: Digitrax DB150,1 DT400, 2UT4R's and a UR91. Any ideas? Thanks. Joe
I have two older PS-REVs from Tony's Trains. They have never caused me any problems.
I would look first at your wiring, particularly any areas where you've been working recently. This is from long experience. I've generally found that if you've been there, you caused the problem. If you haven't been there, on the other hand, then the finger of suspicion points to something that just went bad.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Yes they can go bad. MRc's and my AR1's have relays. That means moving parts that eventually wear out. Solid state can go bad too but usually last much longer.
Martin Myers
I agree with both, but you should deal first with Mr. B's message. Things do go wrong all the time on our layout, and the symptom can be misleading. If a perfectly good reverser has connection problems, won't it seem to have failed? Or, could it appear to have failed? If one of its leads is loose, either to or from it, or there is a bad join somewhere in the rails above the feeders, you could get the impression that the reverser is no longer functioning. If all the connnections prove good after thorough investigation, and the wires are sound in all cases, but the reverser doesn't prevent a short at either end of the gapped section, then you can begin to test the reverser itself.
If you are not so tight for cash, and would just as soon go digital this time, I recommend the PSX-AR or recent equivalent. I have had one on my layout for six years now, and I honestly do forget it is there.
Before you replace the unit...........
Check ALL of your gaps. And especially if you have some piece of rolling stock or loco sitting on or across a gap.
Reversers look at both rails to make decisions. It may work in one direction if a gap has closed but when it attempts to reverse it falls to a short because one side is not moving.
If you live in an area with temperature swings or your RR room is susceptible to such things, rails can "walk" and create weird things.
see ya
Bob
Thanks for all the replys. I replaced the MRC one with a Digitax AR1. All is working now. After some research. I found the MRC rated up to 5 AMPS. I recently replaced my power supply with a 5AMP one from digitrax. This might have caused the failure of the MRC unit. The AR1 is rated up to 8AMPS,6AMPS continusely. I will look into an electronis reverser and save up for one. Joe.
The AMP rating is the MAXIMUM that it can switch, regardless of whether your booster has a higher output. Both the MRC and Digitrax use a mechanical relay that can fail. It's highly unlikely that you have a locomotive that draws 5 Amps when it crosses the gap, so the failure was probably more mechanical than electrical.
cacole The AMP rating is the MAXIMUM that it can switch, regardless of whether your booster has a higher output. Both the MRC and Digitrax use a mechanical relay that can fail. It's highly unlikely that you have a locomotive that draws 5 Amps when it crosses the gap, so the failure was probably more mechanical than electrical.
The AR1's at least, use a sealed relay that's rated for something like 50,000 operations. That means you need to have it reverse polarity once every minute, 24 hours every day, for about 35 days. I don't believe mechanical failure is as big a problem as some folks tend to think it is.
OTOH, the auto-reverser that failed was an MRC. If they make them in the same factory where their decoders are made, well, look at the reliability of those decoders and judge for yourself.