I used to have the typical Atlas stuck issue. What I found out was a spray of tuner cleaner, the plastic compatible type with a lubricant, eliminated the problem. I spray mine about once a year and have not had a burned out motor since. It may be worth a try on the Bachmann type.
Jim
I never trusted those little black boxes. I use a DPDT center off momentary contact switch to control two turnouts. Each turnout has a SPST switch inline between the power source and the DPDT. That way I can operate both turnouts at once or just one.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
cacole don7 They sent me a note that it was not necessary to send the unit in, they will look into it I am told. Wonder why they did not want the unit that started to smoke back? Did they say they are going to send you a replacement unit or just ignore the problem -- Three or four members of our local club have sent locomotives back to Bachmann for repair, and in practically every case they have received new replacements instead of repaired items; sometimes a DCC Sound-On-Board model in place of a much cheaper Standard Line loco.
don7 They sent me a note that it was not necessary to send the unit in, they will look into it I am told. Wonder why they did not want the unit that started to smoke back?
They sent me a note that it was not necessary to send the unit in, they will look into it I am told.
Wonder why they did not want the unit that started to smoke back?
There is no repair or replacement. These items, the switch control boxes, are only covered by a 90 day warranty.
I offered to send the boxes in so they could see the damage caused by the extreme shorting out..If I was them I would be worried about a fire and subsequent damage resulting from the use of their control boxes.
I will not use any of the Bachmann control boxes, will use replacement Atlas switch control boxes for the interim. I have ordered proper SPDT mon toggle switches.
That is what surprised me, it was not the Switch motor, it was the Switch Control box smoking,
These are there newer units - no screws and printed circuit board.
I send a note to Bachmann, advising them that this happened.
When I was in N scale i was constantly melting or burning out Atlas switch motors - til they switched to the metal cased ones, then they just burned out without melting. I never had any problems with HO, just the N scale stuff - so I build a CD unit from Practical Electronic Projects for Model Railroaders and a few dollars in parts from Radio Shack and never again had any problems.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Joe Staten Island West
Those blue "slide and push" buttons from Atlas have a high failure rate too - they like to get stuck in the depressed position.
Solution: capacitor discharge power supply, either make one (pretty simple) or buy a premade one lik Circuitron Snapper. Not only will the turnouts throw with more authority, if a button gets stuck, the current is limited and nothing will smoke.
Well, had some excitement today.
The outer loop on my layout is comprised of EZ track and has a number of EZ Track switches. I have had trains running on the outer loop for about a year now and have until a couple of weeks ago thrown the switches manually.
I decided that as these were powered switches I would wire them up and control them by using a control box for each one. I started to wire the control boxes and discovered a high failure rate with the Bachmann control boxes. I have a couple of dozen old Atlas switch control boxes which date back many years to my old layout from years ago. These are the slide switches and all connections are by screws, whereas the new Bachmann control boxes have printed circuits.
So I wired the switches to the old Atlas control boxes and all the switches now work correctly.
Today, I wired a couple more switches on another part of the layout. I decided to use one of the new Bachmann control boxes. I double checked that it worked and then wired it to a switch on the layout.
After about 10 minutes I decided to test all of the switch control boxes on all of the switches that I had wired up todate.
Well as I was tripping the switches I saw a puff of smoke on the Bachmann contol box that I had just installed.
There are now no Bachmann control boxes on my layout.
I swear that the control box would have burst into flame had I left it on for any longer.
I sent Bachmann service department a note on what happened.
I knew that these new Bachmann switch control boxes had a high failure rate and were junk from when I wired the EZ Switches..
I did not know that they were dangerous