HELP!What is going on with my layout. I’m in the procees of doing scenenery so I havent run trains for a while. I started running a train and bam. it trips the circuit breaker. I have cleaned the track and can’t understand why the breaker is tripping. It will run a train for a while then then in random places will trip the breaker?[:0]
It sounds like you shorted out your track with some of the scenery. Make sure there is not a piece of wire or something between the rails anywhere that is touching both, or any metal tools left on the track anywhere. A thorough track cleaning is probably in order; maybe even running a large magnet over the layout to pick up any loose bits of metal.
YOu could also have a loose wire under the layout that was knocked loose that is flopping around. Or it could be the locomotive has a short.
Or maybe a wire inside the locomotive? I’ve seen metal debris picked up and held by the magnets in the motor.
How about badly insulated trucks? I’ve got a couple of old Athearn engines, now de-motored and running as “honorary” dummy engines. I found that every once in a while, the trucks would brush against the frame and cause a short.
How about coupler shorts? If your couplers aren’t isolated properly from the frames, they can cause a short when two engines (or even cars) with “hot” frames come in contact. And yes, this too can be intermittent.
I would take all the cars and engines off the track, and then run one engine around and see if it shorts. If it does, try a different engine. Once you’ve tested all the engines, then try groups of cars. Alternately, you may find the problem only happens in a particular area of track.
The problem probably is NOT in your DCC system, though. It sounds like it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do - shutting down when it detects a short.
Do you mean that the DCC system shuts down, or are you saying that it actually trips
your breaker in the breaker box of your home? I hope you mean that the system is
shutting down, because if it is tripping your house breaker, something is bad wrong.
Dave
I think I narrowed it down to an athearn f59p that i just had a decoder put in. It seems to run fine most of the time, but when i have another engine on the track, and all the lights are on the athearn, that is when it shorts. Oh yeah, its not shorting my house breaker.Thank god, because I just did the wiring in the garage.[:)]
It could be that the F59PH is drawing too much current - does it still happen if you run with the lights off? Also worth checking the internal wiring of the loco - is there a possibility of a wire brushing against something it shouldn’t inside there? If it runs perfectly with lights off then either could be the case, I personally would check the lighting wiring for possible shorts first. If you can run two other locos together then it would suggest the F59 is the problem.
Did you use the correct size decoder? Could it be heatring up and drawing too much amperage? Also check for a strand of wire sticking out from a solder joint inside. Let us know!
I think I narrowed it down. I have a digitrax PM42 circuit breaker. I think that the engine was drawing just enough current to trip the breaker. I have since upped the amperage the PM42can handle and that seems to be working so far. One thing I dont like about digitrax is how complicated the manuals are. I had to cross reference 2 of them to perform this task. They should make a digitrax for idiots book so maybe I can figure it out without all the guess work.