ground plane questions

I would stay away from using anything that goes to the grounded plug on your electric outlet. This is set up to take accidental electric flow(when they short out) from household appliances or other devices in your house.

Also lighting can go straight to your layout, if you get a lightning strike nearby your house, using the household ground. That would be complete instant death for your layout!

You can set up a type of grounding plane and hook it up to the negative side of your transformer or transformer bank. Maybe you can rig something to hook up to the antenna of your command control system and have a grounding plane from that.

Lee Fritz

when you put your hand over the engine does it move it the dead zone?

if so the you indeed have aground plane issue and what you said above should correct the issue.

yea the hand over the engine makes it work . is there a height it should be above the track

 can't go to a pipe or something there is none in the loft

Lionel (Mike Reagan) and Ericstrains both did videos on this subject. I remember watching them, but couldn't readily find them just now. Will post back with a link if I can find them later.

do not connect any ground plane to the negative side of the transformer.

all ground planes MUST be to earth ground.