Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[Justinmiller171]

What's up with the DCC system you've got? Are you certain there's no bad connection of even a short circuit somewhere that 'snuck' in while laying your track and wiring things up? Check if all frogs are clean and have no bits of 'junk' wedged in, and if you use Peco 'electrofrog' turn outs, make sure that the two rails leading up to the frog point have insulated rail joiners installed.. There may be other brands of turnouts that need the same treatment, but it's easily overlooked.

Koos

I am using the newer Walthers turnouts and they should be Dcc-friendly.

I guess these things are pretty obvious, but make sure that you've got your NCE PowerCab connected to the correct plug and using the correct 6 wire flat cable and not the supplied 4 wire cable. I read somewhere that the original users manual showed the cable locations wrong so be sure you're connected correctly as in this diagram [ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]. Make absolutely sure that you don't have any sort of short from the power panel wires and on your track. I've never had any problem with mine and even got a longer 14 foot cable that I use so I can walk from one end of the layout to the other. Just love the NCE system!

Only other thing that I can think of would be if you don't have power feeders to all your tracks, you'll lose power to your loco when it's on a section of track with no power feeders and you line your switch so that power is cut to that track. Visualizing a typical TimeSaver track arrangement, I can see all sorts of locations where that could happen.

Just some thoughts.

I have the cab plugged into the right place, no problem there.

I currently have it plugged into a lone piece of flextrack and it still won't work, I however, have the wires just tucked into the rail joiners so that may be the problem

Thanks for the help guys!