For those of us with permanent layouts, and a job, famalies, civic boards and the like, we are always stealing time here and there to work on our layouts. That said I had some time this week to work on my layout, after all it’s only been 4 years into it, and perhaps one decade it will be done ! I focused my engergies to sprucing up my Union Station complex, which is made up of 4 tracks, and 2 rows of K-Line/Marx station platforms. I swapped out 2 of the platforms that were not lighted, for 2 that are, screwed down the tracks, and added ballast. Although I use Fastrack for the main lines, I used regular tubular and K-Line Super Snap for the 4 station tracks, and they look 100% better with the balllast. Between the platforms and the headhouse (an American Flyer Union Station), I have an old prewar Lionel Goosneck Lamp, that I secured to it’s site. I reattached the wires for the platforms, placed the benches and little people around, and then went to power up the layout board, and yes, all it did was short out !! For all the lights, buildings, platforms, etc I use a basic bus wiring scheme on 2 zones. So here I am ready to tear my hair out (if I had any), and after 2 days of tracing wires, and resigning myself to the reality of rewiring the layout, I found the culprit. That vintage gooseneck lamp, I screwed into place, and the metal screw caused it to short. I removed the screw, reattched the wires, and viola!, the layout powered up. Simple solution, albeit it took 2 days to stumble on it. Ken
Congrats on finding the problem. It seems there are a lot of gremlins in these layouts & it’s rewarding to track one down.
When I start getting frustrated, I remind myself that everything that didn’t work is more knowledge. That’s not nearly as much fun as finally finding the cure, though.
Charlie
This goes more to the difficulty of finding electricl problems which suddenly crop up seeming;from nowhere–There is an infinte number of chances for short circuits–If you have hidden trackage (in tunnels) and a steam loco drops a screw out its runiing rods, you may not motice it until you have absolutely no chance to find it. The problem is not so much replacing the screw to restore the unit to running; it is the question where will that lost screw wind up, and how will I find it when it causes a short, somewhere on the layout, maybe carried there by magnetraction?