Have you metered the rails here and there, Chip? With a loco attempting to suck up some wattage? I’m wondering about the power supply. I hope it’s not your Z.
Did you solder the second set of feeders while the Zephyr was turned on, or still connected to the bus? I don’t want to say it’s aliens in the form of stray energy but, it may be aliens.
Hook the Zephyr to a piece of track you have laying around, see if it runs a loco. If so, still good to go. If not - Try the OpSw 39 reset int he back of the Zephyr manual (if you lost yours, it’s on the Digitrax site under Retired Products).
It’s not a bad idea, even an ESD safe iron/station is so because the tip is grounded. Touching that to a live rail can definitely cause issues. ANd one that’s not ESD safe could actually flow current back in to the track, so even if the system is shut off you can do some damage.
Reconnected it, now everything works. I guess you could call that a soft reset. Track has problems. Tim at Fast Tracks recommends spray painting the turnouts after the ties are on. He didn’t say that the turnouts wouldn’t pick up power from rail joiners if you do.
I also have to connect ground throws and the other half of the feeders.
BTW: I’m not completely new at DCC. I ran my first couple layouts with this Zephyr. The club I belonged to ran an Empire builder and when our tech guy quit the club, I was the guy that got things running. I’ve operated on all three major DCC systems. Never did Lentz.
Selector-- it wasn’t the Zephyr. Don’t say things like that. [banghead]
Maybe? Not sure. I think we should still go with aliens.
I still have the manual. The only reset listed is resetting CVs to factory settings.
Yes, that is the OpSw 39 reset, resets the whole thing to factory settings.
Well, when you paint track, paint is pretty much an insulator so…
It’s not a bad idea to drop feeders tot he two outside most rails of the turnout. If you didn’t add more gaps than called for in the PCB ties, this will provide a solid power feed to the closure and point rails as well. As opposed to allowing the power feed to be via the rail joiners to the adjacent section of track.
I don’t use DCC, I don’t use FastTracks, but in the whole 53 years I have been doing this I don’t trust rail joiners (solder) and I don’t paint, weather or ballast track until it is running and well tested.
And my 2nd and 3rd layouts were hand layed, the first was TruScale, so that’s more or less the same as FastTracks…
I did not look far enough to find the OpSw table for the Zephyr, but here is one for a different Digitrax model, and I suspect many of the values will be comparable:
It’s always the wierd stuff that gets you. And I do have a lot to learn. This layout I’m going to learn to program the locos with JMRI. I have a old Win7 dedicated computer for it.
It swings out on a lazy susan.
Luckily as far as the layout goes, everything is simple. No power districts or circuit breakers, or AR loops, or turnout control. Just a bus, some track and a few engines.
Well, many spray track outdoors and hand brush their turnouts and crossovers. I prefer to lay the track first, solder the joints and feeders, then hand brush.
Spray aheadof time, or afterwards - you have to clean the rail tops off. A brite boy or similar works well, or if you do it before the paint actually dried, a towel with some laquer thinner or similar will clean the paint off the railhead. As for the sides where rail joiners go - the brass wire brush in a Dremel would make short work of that. No need to strip all the paint off and start over.
