ZWC problem - 2023 edition

@ChrisVA posted:

So, any thoughts?  Is there anything more to say about this?  Anyone get to the bottom of it?  Have people who have posted on this in the past ever gotten the ZWC working right?    Obviously, if there are any parts required it is a lost cause.

Thanks for any insight.  As might be obvious, I am a newcomer with no skills or experience in electronics.  These OGR forums are my lifeline.

Chris

Chis,

I hear ya, but ...

There are many, many people on this forum over the years who have ZW-C's that "work right", i.e. have had no problem producing a proper and continuous voltage.  The "Legacy problem" is indeed the only big thing we're aware of.  That's why a solution for it was offered to you before any other comments, pertinent to your specific situation or not.

Conclusion: They are definitely not all bad, nor so they have a common and frequent failure mode.  So, as with most things Lionel has produced there's no overriding single reason leading to a failure common to all of them over the entire production run.

If yours is bad then it's one of those few that needs to be fixed for something other than the Legacy problem.

Can that be done if parts are in short supply?  Maybe, maybe not.

The best way to deal with this isn't to ask us what you need to replace, as you've already have gotten that feedback from us and it apparently didn't apply to your situation, but to find a Lionel service technician to do an actual diagnosis that is pertinent to your specific situation.

That's why they exist, and there are several of them on the forum who can do this for you.

Mike

There are some bad ones out there.  Not sure if you read my post (click here) but I too had a ZWC that worked for a while and then just would stop working at any given time.  The problem is a board that needs to be replaced, but when I had the issue, Lionel was not making any new boards.

I also discovered on another ZWC I owned, that when you connect 180 bricks through to the ZWC and use it Command Mode, there is a voltage drop by one or two volts immediately from the ZWC's A, B, C, & D posts.  I didn't get the full "18-volts" from the brick!  I don't know if the same issue occurs in Conventional Mode. 

I ended up getting rid of both ZWCs and just hooking up the 180 bricks to my TPC's. 

@ChrisVA posted:

An issue that keeps coming up in threads on the ZWC: bricks working, power coming into the controller, green light on, but no power being sent to the track.  No readout on the attached volt/ampmeter.  No red light blinking on the controller (though I am beginning to suspect that the bulb is out on mine.)

The problem is, for the moment, intermittent.  I have no idea what any of my fiddling and resetting and connecting and disconnecting and cussing might accomplish, but other times it works fine.   Last thread on this was last year, but the solutions proposed were related to the old incompatibilities with Legacy, and I don’t have any Legacy items in the house. I run entirely conventionally.

I keep wondering if I am tripping the controller’s circuit breaker, which is mentioned in the owner’s manual.  But it's not as if I power up, the readout comes on, and then the thing trips.  It's just dead from the moment I plug it in.

So, any thoughts?  Is there anything more to say about this?  Anyone get to the bottom of it?  Have people who have posted on this in the past ever gotten the ZWC working right?    Obviously, if there are any parts required it is a lost cause.

Thanks for any insight.  As might be obvious, I am a newcomer with no skills or experience in electronics.  These OGR forums are my lifeline.

Chris

These had a problem originally with the board.  It would give an errant shut down signal and the output would shut off.

I had a ZW-C powering 4 channels of accessories on my layout.  Randomly it would shut down.  I would have to turn it off and back on to reset it.  I never touched it since it was set to all the voltages I needed for each accessory group.

This drove me crazy as I thought I had some short or overloaded circuit. 

One day I was working on something in the area where it is and as I passed my hand by the transformer, it shut down.  I never had noticed this before. 

So, I reset it and repeated it and it shut down!   Then when I researched it online, I found out about the board/signal issue.

Since I was not using it for anything but conventional control of the outputs, the solution was to disconnect the antenna inside the unit.

Problem solved!  It never shut down again.

You could try that, because the randomness of what you describe sounds the same.

Take the cover off and you will see a single wire going to a big metal plate (antenna).  You can unplug it from the board.

Simple fix if it's the same as what I had.

This could have been a excellent unit.  For whatever reason Lionel did not want to improve it eliminating it's issues.

Probably cheaper to produce than the ZW-L.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies, but to Sean I can only say Wow!  As the kids have it, Awesome!  Yes, popped the cover off, located the brown wire, figured I would do less damage simply cutting it than trying to unplug from the board - a problem? - and the thing that I was assuming had become an anchor or doorstop sprung to life.  If the problem returns I will update this post.

A few weeks ago I had observed something slightly similar to what Sean described: passing my hand over the top of the unit and suddenly it turned on.  Couldn't imagine what possible reason there could be for this, and therefore dismissed it as a fluke, which maybe it was.

I guess this works for me because I run only conventionally, but it's worth noting that for ten years people - not many, yes, but some - have been talking about this problem with the ZWC, and here, because Sean stopped to question an odd phenomenon, is the simplest possible solution.  If he had posted about this earlier I must have missed it.

I was being similarly driven crazy by my fear that there was a short somewhere in my new - first - layout.  As it turned out, the bulb on the red lamp was fine.

As I say I will update if this isn't the end of the story but for the moment, thanks.

Chris

@ChrisVA posted:

Thanks for the thoughtful replies, but to Sean I can only say Wow!  As the kids have it, Awesome!  Yes, popped the cover off, located the brown wire, figured I would do less damage simply cutting it than trying to unplug from the board - a problem? - and the thing that I was assuming had become an anchor or doorstop sprung to life.  If the problem returns I will update this post.

A few weeks ago I had observed something slightly similar to what Sean described: passing my hand over the top of the unit and suddenly it turned on.  Couldn't imagine what possible reason there could be for this, and therefore dismissed it as a fluke, which maybe it was.

I guess this works for me because I run only conventionally, but it's worth noting that for ten years people - not many, yes, but some - have been talking about this problem with the ZWC, and here, because Sean stopped to question an odd phenomenon, is the simplest possible solution.  If he had posted about this earlier I must have missed it.

I was being similarly driven crazy by my fear that there was a short somewhere in my new - first - layout.  As it turned out, the bulb on the red lamp was fine.

As I say I will update if this isn't the end of the story but for the moment, thanks.

Chris

I am not sure about cutting the wire, because technically the wire still attached to the board is an antenna, lol.

But if it doesn't shut down anymore, I guess the wire isn't a strong enough antenna by itself. 

All that is happening is the board is erroneously sending a shutdown command (like on the remote to quickly kill power)

Good luck!

I had two of these, but I decided they were surplus and sold them.  I also just use the PH180 bricks right into my MTH TIU and then on to the tracks.