Hi guy’s i have a problem, i am very new to this hobby, i have soldered all my track and painted it, i just went to power it up for the first time and Nothing, got any ideas what’s going on, the loco runs perfect on a test piece of 36" flex track but when i put it on the layout nothing happens . I would really appreciate any help with this problem.
Your subject probably is your answer - likely a short. Do you have the powerpack/controller hooked up to only one place on the layout? When you say you soldered all the track - do you mean ALL of it? That will make trouble shooting more difficult. I would try splitting the track into smaller sections - ie: isolating it - especially any areas that would be more likely to have shorts. Do you have any sections that turn back on themselves? Also - when you say you painted the track - did you clean off the top of the rails?
Do you have a reverse loop?
Did you clean the paint off the tops of the rails?
Did it operate before you soldered the track?
How do you know you are getting a short? Is a circuit breaker tripping or an ammeter pegged or a “short” light lit?
Are you using one set of feeders to the tracks or many feeders with a power bus?
What brand of switches and are they powered or unpowered frogs?
How much track are you talking about (size, how many switches, etc)?
These are some of the preliminary questions to help troubleshoot the problems. General lesson learned is test everything first. Every time you add a switch, connect it, test it, solder it, test it again.
HI, i figured it out i was using track rails as bumpers and it was shorting it out, after removing them everything is fine now, Thank- you every one!
Glad you found the problem 
I hope you read this since you are new to the hobby. There are 4 situations in model railroading that will cause shorts just after you lay your trackwork in. 1. is a reversing loop (a track that curves it’s way back into itself. ) 2. a wye (a section of track that is conected to itself by 3 turnouts in the shape of a Y with a track that connects across the top of the Y 3. a crossover where two frogs are aligned with each other, and a crossing where figure 8 track work cross over one another. It is a lot to explain here on the forum so your best bet is to get a book on model railroad wiring if you plan to continue building on to your layout. Kalmbach has such a book called Model Railroad Wiring made Easy by Andy S.
an improperly wired layout has kept a lot of people from advancing further in this hobby so having a book on it can get you out of a lot of tight squeezes…chuck
You forgot:
- Tool left laying on the track…lol
- tongue left lying on the track.
You know…you are admiring your handiwork as a train trundles past and your tongue hangs out…
I guess you had to be there.
[:D]
A Kadee height gage (OK, it’s a tool) is the one I keep forgetting to remove from the track.
We could have had a thousand guess’s and I bet no one would have guessed that one. LOL, Now a tool on the track that probably would have been guessed. At first I thought he might have soldered all of his track without any insulators in place. [:)]