I’m stumped by my most recent wiring problem. I’m wiring for DC two cab control, using common rail wiring. I have several blocks all isolated properly by gaps in the rails. For the common rail the wires all come to a brass bus terminal which then is extended by one wire to the control panel. The power rail wires come to a dual barrier terminal strip where each block is isolated and then extended to the control panel individually for each block, then at the control panel power is routed through toggle switches.
I think I should add here that I had locos running through the different blocks correctly at one point, however I had a switch problem so pulled up the switch, fiddled with it to correct the problem (not a wiring problem, it was a point contact problem) and re-installed it. Now when I try to run locos on the track the power in that block doesn’t seem to be there. I extended some wires from the back of the power pack and touched the rails in that block and the loco would run. I then used the same extension wires to touch the terminal points under the layout.
Here’s the weird thing; when I touched a wire to the proper spot on the barrier terminal strip (power rail) and the brass bus terminal (common rail) the loco ran but only if I touched the wire to the exact post that this particular block is wired to on the brass bus terminal. If I touched the extension wire to another post on the bus terminal the loco would not run which doesn’t make sense because all the posts on the brass bus terminal are all inter-connected by virtue of their connection to that terminal. Even weirder was that as long as I touched a wire to the exact post that this block is connected to on the brass bus terminal I could touch a wire to any of the other posts on the dual barrier terminal strip and the loco would run. I’m baffled because the loco should only run when I touch the wire to one particular terminal on the dual barrier strip, the wire going out to that block, since all the