Wiring Problems

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Last week i was in the process of rewiring my layout that i have built for my 5 year old grandson[which by the way is DC] and i seem to be getting a overload on the control box[which by the way is a tech 2].I am running 2 trains on this layout and before it ran fine but now i seem to have lost power to the main track.My question is can i have some wire crossed somewhere that may be causing this or do i need to go back and just start from the beginning and trace wires.It was running fine before i added this other section oh and by the way this is a 8x16 layout with 10 blocks and turnouts. Please give me some direction i can go to solve this problem.

starman

2

Can you post a picture of the layout. If you added a new section of track, it usually comes down to one of two things:

  1. A reverse loop - where a track turns back on itself, allowing the train to come back down the same track it just came from without changing directions. This results in a short.
  2. When you connected the feeders for the new section, the polarity was reversed.

One way to check both possibilities is to cut power to that section. If the overload goes away, you’ve found the problem. The solutions, however, are different. I’ll address the second one first:

  • Simply unsolder the feeders and reverse them.
  • The first scenario is different, though. You have to wire in a way to reverse the polarity of both the loop and the main separately. Once the train enters the loop, you need to reverse the direction of the main. Before the train returns to the reverse loop, and you’re going to travel the direction the train just came from, you must reverse the polarity of the loop. If the train is going to follow the same direction in the reverse loop that it originally did, you don’t need to.

Pick up a copy of “Easy Model Railroading Wiring”, by Andy Sperandeo. It’s an invaluable source of information.

3

  1. Check for inadvertent wiring crossings/errors.

  2. Check for metal objects lying inside/across the tracks, including anywhere inside a turnout, that might be bridging both rails. A track nail, small snippet of wire or rail, a dropped joiner…

  3. Check for a reverse loop if the plan is new.

  4. Check for hard short where power routing turnouts send opposite polarities to sidings or passing tracks that are fed with wire feeders. You’ll need to gap these at the turnout (turnouts…if there is one at each end of a siding).

4

I agree with the comments so far, use your blocks to determine the area of the fault, i.e. turn them all off and then bring them in one at a time.

Nigel

5

Thank you all for the response to my question and if i can i will post a pic of my layout and see if you can tell from that where i may have went wrong.The last post i got about bringing the blocks back one at a time i will have to try that.I am not useing wire feeders on this layout i am using the plastic rail joiners to block it along with 18 inch terminal radius track.ngartshore350 thanks for your comments as well as for everyone else.