07-06-2009, 09:57 AM
Morning all,
After a few days of staring at the schematic for my layout and scratching my head and testing things of come to the conclusion that I have two bad powerpacks. The Tech II pack at Logan yard has a bad something in it's innards which was causing the power to be wide open. When I set the block to the main control panel (Cab A) I had no problems but when I set the block to the yard cab the engine would take off like a shot until I shut down the block. I hooked up an old pack to test my wiring and the problem went away and it works fine.
The second pack is on the Armitage/Lancaster staging control panel. For some reason the power just drops off. I have two automatic turnouts wired up to it and I can throw them about two or three times and then the motors just buzz and won't throw. The locomotives also slow to a stop at full throttle. Puzzling at the very least but again I wired up an old powerpack and it works just fine. I'm at a loss with those two packs but at least I know that I wired the layout correctly. My knees weren't looking forward to crawling around on concrete to check wires. I'll just use the old packs for now until I can replace them sometime in the future.
I'm taking the main out of service just north of the PC crossing for some emergency track replacement. I have two pieces of flextrack coming together in the middle of a curve and you all know how problematic that can be. I'm going to splice in a couple curve sections which should fix it. Once that's done I'm going back over the whole layout and glueing down all the track that I have been fiddling with during this process. That's about all I've got for now as far as an update. One of these days I'll get some more scenery done so I can post some pics. Take care all until next time.
Tyler
After a few days of staring at the schematic for my layout and scratching my head and testing things of come to the conclusion that I have two bad powerpacks. The Tech II pack at Logan yard has a bad something in it's innards which was causing the power to be wide open. When I set the block to the main control panel (Cab A) I had no problems but when I set the block to the yard cab the engine would take off like a shot until I shut down the block. I hooked up an old pack to test my wiring and the problem went away and it works fine.
The second pack is on the Armitage/Lancaster staging control panel. For some reason the power just drops off. I have two automatic turnouts wired up to it and I can throw them about two or three times and then the motors just buzz and won't throw. The locomotives also slow to a stop at full throttle. Puzzling at the very least but again I wired up an old powerpack and it works just fine. I'm at a loss with those two packs but at least I know that I wired the layout correctly. My knees weren't looking forward to crawling around on concrete to check wires. I'll just use the old packs for now until I can replace them sometime in the future.
I'm taking the main out of service just north of the PC crossing for some emergency track replacement. I have two pieces of flextrack coming together in the middle of a curve and you all know how problematic that can be. I'm going to splice in a couple curve sections which should fix it. Once that's done I'm going back over the whole layout and glueing down all the track that I have been fiddling with during this process. That's about all I've got for now as far as an update. One of these days I'll get some more scenery done so I can post some pics. Take care all until next time.
Tyler
CandO7430 (The poster formerly known as IandOFan71)
T. Blackstone,
Division Superintendent,
Ohio Div, Chessie System Railroads
T. Blackstone,
Division Superintendent,
Ohio Div, Chessie System Railroads