I have a four-car Overland Models HO Amtrak California Surfliner set. On my old layout, I noticed they too a lot of juice as they lit up and seemed to suck a lot of juice out of the tracks. Anyway, on my new layout, I cannot get them to move no matter what locomotive I hook up to them. The locomotive might move a few inches and then sputter out. Most times, it won’t even move. If I uncouple the locomotive, it runs fine–but couple it to the cars and they go nowhere. It’s almost like the cars are causing a short somehow.
Has anyone else experienced this? All help is appreciated.
If you’ve got the cars on the track and the locomotive on the track and they are NOT touching and everything works fine, then there is no short at that particular moment. If you then couple the cars to the engine and the short happens, it appears that, for some reason, the train and the locomotive are both “live” but with a different polarity. I wonder if the problem would be temporarily solved by turning the loco around. How about it?
Anyway, it seems like you might have to use some insulated coupler pockets or maybe plastic couplers so that the couplers can’t conduct electricity–I doubt you really want to limit which way the loco happens to face.
Those cars are brass, so if you have metal couplers on them and your locomotive, that is causing a short when they are connected. If you change to plastic couplers on either the locomotive or the lead passenger car, the short should stop. The heavy current draw is another problem that won’t go away as long as there are lights in the cars.
Thanks everyone! I hadn’t even considered the couplers. I can try the loco with a plastic one tonight and see if it solves the problem. It makes sense.