You have checked each and every feeder to be sure that they are connected correctly.
You have physically run your finger along the right rail, and never once found yourself on the left rail indicating an unsuspected reversing loop or wye.
You did NOT use a latex caulk to hold tracks in place, since this will conduct electricy when wet, and will never dry under the tracks where never exposed to air.
Your ballast and the glue used therein is not causing a short.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
RICHHOTRAIN is helping me out with this problem. With his systematic approach I discovered miswirng to the BUS. He identified a revers loop and is educating this oldtimer. This is a layout I designed myself without any knowledge of electricity.
Here is the OP's track plan. He emailed it to me to post for him.
This track plan is an addition to his existing layout and begins on the upper left side of the diagram with those two tracks runnning down the left side of the addition.
Rich
Alton Junction
There's a reverse loop there if you come down the right side track at the left and follow it around, you can come back out the middle track going the opposite way. That's why there's a short.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
rrinker There's a reverse loop there if you come down the right side track at the left and follow it around, you can come back out the middle track going the opposite way. That's why there's a short. --Randy
BINGO !
You gotta love track diagrams. A picture speaks a thousand words.
There is a reversing loop. Install gaps as shown at both ends of the middle track.
Let switch A control the power to the middle track.
Let the normal positon of switch A be against the middle track
Let the reverse position of switch A be aligned for the middle track.
When Switch A is reversed power crosses to the middle track from the tracks outside of switch A
When Switch A in in the normal position, power comes to the middle track from the other end.
Trains must stop on the middle track before proceeding, and Switch A must be moved before the train can continue.
If a train arrives across switch A, it must be returned to normal before it can proceed out of fthe middle tracks.
If a train arrives across switch B, then switch A must be reversed before it can continue.
LION makes it sound complicated, but it is simple railroad interlocking protocol, and indeed levers should also be required for the signals as well as for the switch points, but that, in HO is not necessary, although I do it that way anyway.
BroadwayLionThere is a reversing loop.
I believe that that was determined 4 posts ago.
And I don't think I would have put the gaps where you show them. I would have put them on the other track to the right of A, and after the crossover where you show the gap on the right side.
I did not do that... because the inner track appears to be the main line with most of the traffic on it and all of the switching on it. Of course I do not see what the rest of the layout looks like so I can not discern his operating agenda, but the middle track is the problem, if it were gone there would be no reversing loop.
A train using a "cut-off" (If that is what it is) would have to hold at either end of the cut off for the tower to allow it back onto the mane lion.
LIONS always have reasons. There may be reasons for otherwise, but those are mine for this.
I hate to admit this, LOL, but I agree with LION. The way he gapped the reversing section is the way that I advised the OP. But, maxman's approach would work just as well.