Thanks for the insights guys!
@Ted S: these are all good points. I tried to take the screws out and got the same result. I do think I need to add some jumper wires between some pieces just to make sure I'm not getting a flicker.
@Vernon Barry thank you for this! I actually took both switches apart and put electrical tape over the contacts you highlighted. When I took the bottoms off of them, the steel piece looked warped like a piece of plywood at the bottom of a stack at Lowes. Your fix was able to solve the track jumping on one of the switches but the other is still having an issue.
I noticed something interesting. The switch isn't firing until the engine is halfway through the switch. The front truck (both of the Railking Budd car and an older conventional Lionel Alco) are actually riding up on the switch and jumping into the cross over. Once the front wheels go across, the switch fires.
The crazy thing is when I had these on another version of this layout I had no issues with them.
Here are some pics and videos of what I'm seeing.
