I recently completed a realignment of some track and the industries that use these tracks. When I laid the track I did one thing different and that was to solder the feeders to the bottom of the track rather than to the sides of the rails.
Last night I took out one of my diesels and put ,it on the track so I could test the track and to my horror No Power! I hooked up two wires with clips on them and attached them to the power pack and the diesel and the diesel ran fine but not on the track.
Did I mess up by putting the feeders on the bottom of the tracks? Could adding ballast cement have messed up the connections?
Any suggestons for a fix? I'm tempted to cut the existing feeders loose from under the layout and attach new ones soldered to the sides of the rails.
Thanks again for any help/suggerstion.
Bob
Sounds like you did it correctly. Yes it is likely that ballast may have damaged your connections. The LION always solders to the side of the rails. Why in the world would you ballast the track before testing it fully.
Run the railroad for months before starting the ballast. You may discover things that may need to be realigned.
Clean the rail, perhaps a dap of flux, heat it up, tin it, and then connect your wire to the track.
The problem could be in many places. Could even be a broken wire.
Did you put your locomotive on the track where the power is applied, or elsewhere on the layout. Rail joiners are not a 100% accurate method of moving power from rail to rail. The LION always solders the rail joiners of him.
Also test the locomotive by applying wires or jumpers directly from the power supply to the wheels.
Also test the power supply. Is it working at all. LION has had allof these problems, but then with 14 miles of track I have lots of place for errors.
And BTW
And BTW I am a LION and I talk funny.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Bob,
You can take the soldering to the bottom of the track out of the equation. That's how I've soldered my feeder wires in the past and never had a problem.
Does each track section have it's own feeder? Or, are you using rail joiners to electrically connect sections together that don't have feeders?
Ballast cement? Did you ballast the track also before testing it? You should always test you connections BEFORE ballasting to ensure everything is working properly.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I would place your loco on an unchanged piece of track, and attempt to run it to the reworked area.
If this works, and the loco stops upon entering the reworked area, then you do have one or more loose\broken wires.
Really numb question, based on personal exoerience, did you attach both ends of these wires??
Use your circuit tester to check power, last foot of old track work. Then left rail of last foot with right rail of new work. If good reverse. continue working down a section at a time, funny (not ha ha) things happen.
Dave
Another basic question but still worth asking, is if you cleaned the track after ballasting? Ballasting is an excellent way to dirty up clean track.
Mike
crypt keeperI hooked up two wires with clips on them and attached them to the power pack and the diesel and the diesel ran fine but not on the track.
To trouble shoot you need to try all possible options until you find what works and what doesn't. You said you hooked up wires to the transformer and then hooked them to the engine. Did you try hooking those wires, which you just confirmed worked, to the track and test the loco on the track? If this set of tested wires works then you have a connection problem with the other set of wires. If it still doesn't work when you hook up the wires then you have a something connecting both rails when they should be separate.I hope this helps.
Welcome to the forum. A great deal of electronics is pure magic. This isn't one of those times. Electrically the top of the rail is the same as the bottom.
We don't know where the power side of your feeders go, or how they are connected. Assuming you haven't attached the feeder to the rail with a cold solder joint or glued it to the plastic tie with ACC, then the problem is the attachment of your feeder to the power bus. Either the attachment is bad, you have a broken wire or you've connected both feeders to the same wire.
If you have a multimeter but don't know how to use it, ask. If you don't have one, figure out how to connect a couple of leads to a tail light bulb. (A Harbor Freight $5 meter is perfectly adequate for this) Test it on a known good piece of track. Then connect one end of the lead proven good side of the power supply (it can be anywhere, as long as you know it works) connect the other to the opposite track. Work your way backwards toward the power supply until you find where the electrons start flowing again. You could also start at the power supply and work your way to the rail.
If you have power all the way from the power source to (call it the left) track, take the 1st lead and put it on the opposite power source and trace the power to the right track.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
First, welcome to the forums! EDIT: Big Daddy slipped in on me while I was typing.
You have gotten a lot of good advice and sometimes it can be a multiple of things giving a problem.
How many feeders do you have? How close are they?
Have you put the loco on different places on the layout? Could be one set of feeders isn't connected properly (solder joint, broken wire).
Have you taken the leads you tested your loco with and attached them to the tracks? If not, put the loco on the same piece of track you attach the clips to. If the loco goes this will tell you it is your wiring.
Have you tested to see if you have a short? If you have a simple power pack, it may be tripping the breaker and you not know it. With wires attached to the layout and the same terminals as before on the power pack, touch another set of leads to the loco, like you did before. If the loco runs your layout isn't shorted out, thus it's in the connections (wiring) between the power pack and the rails.
If you have a power bus, go to the end and bare the wires and test.
Just a few thoughts.
Since I am preparing to build a new layout, I will be interested in what you find, so I can check to be sure I don't end up with the same problem. That's one of the nice things about these forums, we can learn from each other, things that work and things that don't.
Good luck,
Richard
Nothing wrong with soldering feeders to the bottom of the rail. Assuming you did this between the plastic tie material and truly soldered the wire to the rail, not just embedded it in the plastic.
Next, are the other ends of those wires hooked up to the right place to supply power to your new track?
And, as mentioned, did you thoroughly clean the track after ballasting? The scenic cement or dilute glue or matte mediau, whatever you used for ballast glue, all dries clear, so it may LOOK like the rails are clean but they are actually coated with some nice insulating glue.
That's really about all that can be wrong, if the syptom is the loco will nto run - if the layout shorted out when a loco entered this section then there are some other things that could eb wrong.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks to all for the welcome.
As to the problem I'm having,now that it was mentioned,I don't remember if I tested the loco before I ballasted the track or not. I guess I assumed everything would be OK. However as I mentioned I get power to the loco using jumper wires attached to the power pack but not on the railos and I tried different tracks. I even tried running the jumper wire from the power pack to the feeder wires and still nothing. One thing I failed to mention-for the feeders I used solid wire. I was told by one of the guys at my LHS that solid wire has a tendency to break and that I shouls have used stranded wire or doesn't it make a difference?
Thanks again
My best guess is that there is dried glue on the tops of the rails from ballasting.
Take a cloth and wet it with rubbing alcohol and rub down the tops of the rails.
Rich
Alton Junction
crypt keeperI was told by one of the guys at my LHS that solid wire has a tendency to break and that I shouls have used stranded wire or doesn't it make a difference?
Codswlop
Yes a solid wire can break. Never had it happen, and LION has THOUSANDS of those things on the layout of him. (see my web site for details).
Solid makes a better connection to the track in that a stray strand does not a make a short.
OK, CHECK THE INTEGRITY of your layout! Do you have a hidden reverse loop that is shorting out the power supply. PUT a 12 v light bulb in series with your track. If it lights up you have a short somewhere on the layout.
LION has such a test lamp built in to his power distribution panel. If a fuse break, him replaces it with the lamp until him can shake the short out of the layout, then him replace the fuse.
I think most people use solid wire for feeders, well at least many of us, because it's easier to bend a little angle on the end where you attach it to the track.
Is the whole layout dead? When Lion says hidden reversing loop, he might mean did you create track that has a reversing loop that you don't know is a reversing loop. If he didn't mean that, I do.
Is there a metal tool (like a Kadee coupler guage) lying across the tracks?
Verify there is nothing wrong with the loco - try using a spare piece of track and connect the jumper wires (the same ones that work when touched to the bottom of the loco) to that piece of track and put the loco on it. If it doesn't run there, you have a loco problem. If it runs there, then we are back to a very dirty track or short circuit sort of problem on the layout.
Just because the loco runs upside down with jumper wires touched to the wheels doesn't guarantee it will work when upright and standing on the wheels - some of the newer RTR Athearns are notorious for this.
Another thing I have seen is people try to run right after balasting and untill the ballast has dried, you can have a short.
First off I want to thank all those who responed to my thread.
There was a lot of helpful hints for me to try in troubleshotting my power issue.
They are greatly appreciated.
Now for a quick trip to the Twilight Zone. Just for the heck of it I placed my diesel on a section of track that I hadn't tried before and believe it or not it ran.It also ran on the rest of the layout except for one small section which I will mess with son.
rrebell Another thing I have seen is people try to run right after balasting and untill the ballast has dried, you can have a short.
Also the glue/water mix can get under the rail joiners and stop conductivity. The question then is do I solder the joiner or run another feeder.
Problem = Rail Joiners... Obviously at least two of them on the same track have failed to pass power.
Solder Rail Joiners or add more feeders.
I had rail joiner issues on the SIW confirmed by squeezing the joint with needle nose pliers and re-trying the loco on the track. Broke out the soldering pencil....
Joe Staten Island West
First off,I apologize for taking so long getting back to all of you.I have many irons in the fire.
Anyway after doing somemore troubleshooting on the issue of loco now woking on all but one track I finally came up with a solution.I attached feeder wires to the dead track and "Eurika!!" the diesel now works on entire layout but as someone suggested I do need to give the track a goog cleaning.
THanks agzin
When you're trying to run an engine on the "no power" section, do you have a short, or is the rest of the layout fine and it's just one section that goes dead? I'm guessing you don't have a short, because the rest of the track works, but it's worth checking that.
Try using clip leads to jumper power from the working section to the non-working section. That should tell you which rail is bad, if that's the problem.
Does the engine work on the section of track that has the feeders soldered to it? That would eliminate the rail joiners as a problem.
Have you gapped any rails, either with or without insulated rail joiners? Does this section have isolated blocks for signally or shutoffs? Are you using power-routing turnouts that could be sending the power elsewhere?
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
If you used weathered track, you must remove the weathering from the top of the rail before you can run your trains. Use something that is abrasive.
Did you remove any weathering before you soldered the feeders on?
Mister Beasley-as I mentioned once I ran feeders to the dead rail the loco ran fine both on it and the rest of the layout.
SouthPenn-the tops of te rails are clean. check my prior reply about running an additional feeder to dead rail which solved problem.