power outage

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Good Morning…

I have a 6 axle BLI engine and it went it goes over certain switches ( peco) it stops, but if I run it fast it will slide through and not lose power… do I have to jump a wire to that switch?

Mike

2

Mike,

How clean are your tracks and the wheels on your locomotive?

Tom

3

Sounds like dirty track, dirty wheels or a combination of the two. It could also be a sign of a loose wire in the loco as well.

4

Are you actually causing a momentary short as you cross the frog?

The two diverging rails come very close as they join the frog, and one rap on Peco turnouts is that wide wheels will bridge the gap and cause a momentary short as they cross. If the engine is moving quickly enough, the short won’t trip a breaker, but if it’s going slowly it might. This is usually solved by covering the gap with a bit of clear nail polish to insulate it.

5

I had a similar situation with an Atlas switch and found that one of the rails dipped slightly due to me using foam and the weight of the engine causing some flexing in the rail. The solution was to drive a spike through the ties where the dip was occuring to keep it from moving. The dip was just enough that when the locomotive went through one of the axels would momentarily lose contact and cause it to lose power and restart. I didn’t have the problem with nonsound locomotive. As others have stated, dirty track could be a caouse too. Sound locomotives with the QSI sound systems are especially sensitive to intermittient track contact.

6

I took my Dremel and isolated the frog from the tracks and it worked.

Fergie

7

I have two BLI SD40-2s. They too have shut off when crossing frogs and gaps. I’ve discovered that a lack of continuity can exist where wheel axle meets the copper bridge (part #101). ALL WHEELS MUST HAVE CONTINUITY in order to ensure that loco wont shut of when wheels cross these gaps**.**

A multimeter with audio/led continuity capability will troubleshoot this problem, once and for all.

What to do is:

  1. Take the loco off the track.

  2. Check continuity between two wheels on one side of a truck. Place the red lead on a wheel and the black lead on another wheel on the same side of the truck. Repeat this process until you’ve covered all combinations of wheels that share a common copper bridge. This will isolate the problem wheel. If the meter beeps/led illuminates, you have continuity, if it doesn’t, you gotta clean the wheel and copper bridge at that given axle.

  3. Disassemble the power truck, clean the wheels really good with alcohol and lightly scuff the inside face of the copper bridge with your Dremel sander attachment. Be extremely careful not to break the sideframes when prying the bridge off the retainers and connections where the pick-up wires are soldered to the bridges.

  4. Insert a wheel axle into a hole on the bridge and gently squeezed the top/bottom of the outer flange on the bridge with your Xuron Rail Snips (be careful not to squeeze too hard). This tightens the axle a litte so you’ll have to turn the axle by hand to work it in. Repeat this process until you you’ve slightly tightened each flange at each hole.

  5. Spray a wee-itty-bitty drop of CRC 2-26 on the axle holes.

  6. Reassemble the trucks and check continuity again.

Basically, youre making sure the copper bridge is completing the curcuit when you touch the multimeter leads to two of the wheels on each side of the truck. When the mulimeter beeps/led illuminates on eac

8

Mike,

If you need additional help, email me at theodolite1@aol.com with your phone number and I’ll talk you through the process.