Gave a friend a new Legacy controller. Hooked the "one" ground wire to the outside rail of his track, plugged in the unit, and it worked with the new Legacy loco. But....
Now, from time to time, we will power up and not only will the Legacy unit not operate the Legacy loco, but the track won't power up. The Fastrack switches light but look very dim. The older non-command control locos will not power up.
Then, we will unhook the "one" wire running from the Legacy controller to the outside rail and all locos will run fine in conventional mode.
We are running Fastrack and a new ZF with 2 power bricks. We are not seeing any breaker throws on the bricks, although we have been turning them off and resetting power. Sometimes, when power is turned off and we re-connect the "one" wire, Legacy and conventional will work fine for a few power-ups, and then we're back to the problem. We putting sufficient power to the tracks to work correctly in Legacy mode when we try that--at least 18v.
What amazes me is that disconnecting the "one" wire would have any effect on power to the track at all, or conventional operation of locos that are not command control units. (When I say not command control, I mean older Lionel units from the 1950s and early '60s that are transformer operated only units.)
We have tried everything we can think of, but we HAVE NOT yet run a ground wire from the Legacy unit to the green ground on the electrical outlet. Would that help? Any other thoughts?
