Stan,
Once again, thanks, and appreciate your follow-up on this.
Interesting about the styles, or versions, of UCS track sections and I suppose it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that there are different configurations out there. Especially after decades of Lionel producing these. Frankly, all I know about mine (I have 3-4 of them) are that they are Lionel part 6-65530 with the red magnet.
I’ve always found those controller boxes to be somewhat problematic and, in fact, a few of mine seem to be degrading to the point where pushing buttons works sometimes; other times not so much. That’s how I ended up in this thread wondering about a switch replacement.
Thanks for the suggestion of the quick test and will give it a try! 
And report back here.
