Pictures ARE worth a thousand words, your’s cleared up alot of earlier questions.
Is it just this one switch that is acting up, or are several 1122’s doing the same thing? I tried to duplicate your problem with one of mine that I know has worked properly in the past, but to no avail. I’ve had your same problem on a couple of K-Line switches before, and it turned out that the switch was wired internally incorrectly from the factory - resoldered the wires to the correct rail strips on the underside and they worked fine. K-Line’s are easy to remove the baseplate - 4 or 5 screws to remove (and lose). I’ve only pulled the baseplate off one 1122 - a real pain in the !@#@ to grind or drill out the rivets without fouling or loosening something else up.
I’ve also had a K-Line remote controller with some sort of ground problem that would throw the switch into a real fit. Never could find the problem, it metered just like all the other switch controllers (maybe it was cursed…or at least I cursed at it alot…).
If it’s just this one switch, you may be better off just tossing aside and replacing it. Unless you enjoy the challenge…
Well, I removed the remote controller and it did not change anything. I also hooked up the switch’s mate and it behaves the same way. So, the conclusion I have at this time, is that the switches are reversely wired. It appears as though, the bases are unmolested, and therefore incorrectly wired from the factory.
Is this really the case?
Does this happen frequently enough to warrant consideration?
Why would BOTH switches be reverse wired?
What else could cause what I am seeing?
Is the switch suppose to auto-align with every pair of trucks that pass, or only the first pair of trucks? (It seems like it does every time.)
I did do another test. I used a thin wire to close the circuit between the outside rail of one side of the “Y”, with the inside rail on the other side of the :Y: And sure enough the switch flipped the other direction!
I refer the reader to the same linked photo I posted before
One is that the coils are wired to the wrong control rails and terminals. The control rails are connected directly to the terminals by metal strips under the plastic which could not have been assembled incorrectly. But the coils could have been soldered to the wrong strips.
The other possibility is that the small pinion that throws the switch is rotated 180 degrees from its proper position. In this case, even if the proper solenoid is energized, the points will move to the wrong side.
Which of these two is the problem actually doesn’t matter, since you should be able to cure the problem by rotating the pinion. There is usually enough backlash and flexibility in the pinion and the rack to do this.
The pinion also drives the lantern, which might also need to be adjusted for the proper indication. In fact, the problem may have arisen when someone rotated the pinion to reverse the indication, not realizing that the anti-derailing feature would be messed up. The correct indication is of course green for the tangent, red for the diverging path. However, on a toy-train layout, the curved track is often the actual main line and the tangent serves as a diverging path, which makes the reversed indication reasonable, if done right.
I am new to this and don’t know an 1122 from a whatever.
I would power the switch to the auxillary power post rather than from the track and see if the problem still occurs. if you need a techinical manual to work with auxillary power try the Lionel web site for a pdf down load. Hope that this helps.
The O27 switches don’t have auxiliary power posts, although it is possible to tease the solenoid common out with some effort, as has been discussed. In any case, this will not alter the effect of swapped coil connections.
This is just a question from a newbie, guys. Could reversed common and hot leads from the transformer cause this problem? I realize the polarity doesn’t matter, but could the isolation of the switch components get screwed up? If it did, it would affect both switches.
Regardless of how the voltage gets to the switch, when the wheels bridge between the control rail and the outside rail, only the coil connected to that control rail is connected. The other is open-circuited. So, the one that operates must be the one connected to the control rail. If it moves the points the wrong way, it is connected to the wrong control rail.
Sounds like lionelsoni is on the right track for your problem. I forgot about one switch in the parts box that has the gearing fouled up. With some fiddling around with the rack and pinion/lamp holder gears I can reverse the direction that the swivel rail will throw when one of the coils is activated. His explaination of someone purposely reversing the gearing movement sounds more reasonable than the possibility of you finding two switches in a row wired incorrectly from the factory.
I just looked again at your picture and compared it to one of my switches. Indeed, the pinion is rotated 180 degrees out of position relative to the rack.
I think the rack and pinion gears rotated 180 sounds more likely. And I think it seems a much easier problem to solve, then disassembling the switch. I’ll give one a try and let you know how it goes. Thank you everyone for your help.