Hi Guys.... I've just joined the OGR forum. Our main interest has been in Large Scale for many, many years but most of it has been recently sold and the outdoor layout, The Prescott Canyon Southern Garden Railroad has been dismantled. A recent purchase of a bunch of MTH O gauge stuff as well as the WIU WiFi has been a real blast and a whole bunch of fun......
A fun group of guys from the Prescott, AZ area (The Bradshaw Mountain Highrailers) get together to run in our local mall, provide displays of running trains for Senior Centers, Schools and anywhere there is an interest to see a bunch of train nuts act quite sensibly most of the time white running trains. I've been very privileged to be invited to join their group.
Would you be so kind as to look at the diagram and help find our problem…. Yes, we have (are) a problem…… We’re having crossover power “leaks” and not able to completely isolate the outer loop on the diagram below…
History…. Layout has been nicely running mostly PS-1, K-Line, Williams locomotives and an occasional PS-2 or 3 locomotive operating under “conventional” power using a Z1000 brick and Controller. Power feeds from the rheostat to the 3 sections of track. The RealTrack O31 turnouts have been powered by track voltage rather than the 14 volt AC accessory out put.
It was our desire to “isolate” the inner and outer loops per the diagram from the turnout manual on page 14. Rather than using a SPDT toggle, we used 2 SPST so we could isolate both tracks. The turnout wiring was changed from track power only to 14 volt AC accessory power per figure 9 on page 10 in the O31 manual.
We were doing all this so we could add the new MTH WIU and updated TIU 5.0 so we could run the layout with both WIFI and Z1000 conventional controls. The Z1000 power brick is used to power both the Z1000 controller and the TIU in fixed input #1 to Fixed output #1. We found that the WIU will power the TIU when the Z1000 power brick is not used. The Z1000 power brick was switched through a DPDT HD toggle switch to either the TIU or the Z Controller. The Z Controller is NOT used to power the TIU, just the Z1000 Power Brick.
All trains run just fine except we cannot isolate the outer loop by turning off the #2 SPST switch…. The TIU fires up nicely as does the WIU. WIU spits out WIFI just fine and we can connect, find our PS2 & PS3 trains, start them with the APP on our iPhones and run them. We can switch all the power back to the Z1000 and Controller and run trains conventionally. We can isolate the inside track just fine and it goes completely dead when the #1 SPST toggle is turned off.
PROBLEM… The #2 SPST toggle will not isolate the outer track and it won’t turn off… Trains running either conventional or with DCS just keep on keepin’ on even though the #2 SPST toggle is switched to the off position.
We’s stumped….
Are we beyond HELP????????
Thanks so very much for any ideas...
