MR is a cold weather hobby for me and so far this season I've done a major scenery project and I am about done with a massive track maintenance project so I haven't done much except run trains, mainly to test out track fixes. As a result, I haven't operated my 130' TT since last spring. I decided this morning would be a good time to put it to use and I thought it might be a little rusty from lack of use. I cleaned the debris that had gathered in the pit, then went though the ring scraping out every tiny bit of debris there was between the cogs. From experience I knew that even a tiny speck of ballast or other foreign material between those cogs will stop the TT dead. After ensuring the cogs were clean I turned on the power. Nothing. The red power light didn't come on. I reasoned that after sitting for so long, tarnish might have built up on the power rings and/or the wipers preventing good contact. I lifted the bridge from the pit and cleaned and polished the rings as I would with dirty track. I put the bridge back in and I had power. I pressed the button and the bridge began to rotate. It did about a quarter revolution and then stopped dead. I lifted the bridge out and checked for debris between the cogs. Nothing. I checked the motor gears and saw one minute particle which I scraped out with a small screwdriver. I put it back in, made a short rotation and quit again. I tried reversing directions and still it wouldn't move. There's no apparent reason for the lack of function. During the first couple tries, it did make some indexed stops because the red indicator light came on but on this stop, there was no indication of an indexed stop. I lifted the bridge again and manually moved it a few inches and was able to start it up again but again it quit after a short rotation. No index indicator light. I tried reversing directions but still no go.
I've run out of ideas for things to try and was wondering if anyone else had experienced similar problems and what I might do about it. This TT has never been a reliable performer but usually I have been able to work things out but this time I'm at a dead end. Any ideas?
Did you zero the tt out. Brian