EZ Track turnouts NO power on inside rail

[wfletcher]

So I bought some turnouts for my layout.  #6's cause I use large engines.  I have tried it with both the frog wire (underneath) connected and disconnected.  And the same thing happens on both left and right turnouts.  When going straight and not taking the turnout; as soon as the engine passes the frog it stops.  Checking continuity the inside track has none past the frog.  And one of my switches for changing direction burnt out.  These are DC switches running on AC power, on an HO layout.     Any ideas other than adding another power rail on that section of track?     And why would a switch burnout that is less than 2 months old?  Thanks up front.

[trainman203]

A jumper wire from the good rail to the bad rail.

[jward]

Twin coil switch motors do have a tendency to burn out if you're not careful with them. The coil is essentially a dead short across the power supply, and the coils heat up rapidly when activated. That is why it is so important to only press the button for an instant. To prevent such burnout in the future, you may want to look into a capacitor discharge unit, that will dump an instantaneous jolt of electricity across the coils, regardless of how long the button is pushed.

[wfletcher]

trainman203
A jumper wire?  Is this normal?

jward
the switch is not a hold down button, but a left/right button; depending on which way it is switched.

Thank you both for your replies. 

[Quentin]

I have those left-right switch boxes. Both are fairly old (about 8 years?) and are still going strong.

[skipcek]

I too am having issues with EZ track #4 switches. I have at least four that were dead right out of the packaging. Customer service referred me to the forum. I tried making sure the frog was powered but so far they remain a dead short.
I am at a loss. Any help would be appreciated.

[wfletcher]

I used a multimeter  (amps. ohms, etc).  It all lead to the same thing.  There is no continuity between the ends, straight thru or turning off.  Trying to make things soldered beneath is a waste of time.  I had to add wires to the outside of the track of electric to go to turnoffs.  I think they know it's a production problem and to expensive to fix.   Don't add to inside of track, wheeels....

[trainman203]

A jumper wire is normal to supply power from good rail to bad rail, past some power barrier like a bad rail joiner or a bad frog.

You can test it before installation simply by putting your engine on the bad section of track touching a wire on both the good end and the bad end.

[wfletcher]

trainman203
the point I'm trying to make is poor QC (maybe none) on Bachmann's part
And the fact is there is a ton of cut offs out there with this same problem
Don't get me wrong.  I have a ton of Bachmann stuff.
But, they should be monitoring this stuff and remedy the easy things to make them look that much better.

[trainman203]

I have at least a dozen of those number five switches with the metal frogs and I've always been disappointed in them. The point rail at the point of hinge merely sits barely held by a little pin into a little piece of metal that bridges to the point of electrical contact in the adjacent stock rail.  After a little time out in the real world, the little plate, that the rail hinges on top of becomes oxidized, and that's the end of reliable electrical contact. I've tried squirting contact cleaner fluid up under it, which sometimes works for a while. But there's no really fixing this issue.

With toy train switches, Bachmann's are certainly the best looking of the bunch, but rate really low on the electrical reliability scale. I'm not using these switches on my next layout.

[wfletcher]

Not sure where you're talking about.  Can you do a print with arrows?

[trainman203]

 Technically beyond me. Sorry.

[wfletcher]

I hope I can help.
Turn the switch over and you will see brass strips running from the straight track to the turn off track.  There are 2 strips, one for each track.  What happens is that some how they lose connectivity to one rail or the other or possibly even both.
I personally tried to resolder from the bottom with NO success.
I ended up running jumper wires from each rail to the other from straight to turn out.
Just remember to solder jumpers on outside of rail
Hope this helps.

[Ralph S]

Not sure if you have the same issues, but this may shed some light on what I found.

In the image below (fig. 1) you will see a broken leg of the switch track.  The rivet that holds that portion of the track actually broke off.  But before it finally broke, I was having intermittent operation of my engines when they when through that turnout.   Also before the rivet broke I noticed that that section of track wasn't touching that outside leg.  I suspected that it needs to be touching that outside rail in order for that movable section of track to have power.  The rivet also was supposed to have power going through it too. 

Although this is not a frog problem, it acts like a frog problem, and I went down that frog problem path too.

In Fig 2 you will see another image of the missing rivet and the movable section of track across the opposite rail.  If your rivet breaks immediately turn off the power the track.  In this image, the power is turned off.  It's just to show that when the rivet breaks that movable rail can create a short.

Turning over the track doesn't support getting power to the movable section of the track.  So, what I did was ensure that the track (green circle) (fig. 3) actually touches the rail. I use an ohm meter to check to see if it is actually making a connection. 

As for the rivet, I fixed it by adding a very small wire from the rail to the new rivet I installed (red) Fig 3.  I thought about adding a more permanent wire (orange) but I believe that would impede the operation of the movable track section.
I truly believe this is a QC problem or just maybe a fluke in the manufacturing of the rivet.  The rivet wasn't holding, and it definitely wasn't supporting current pass it.

This repair helped me save a turnout.  Maybe for what its worth it might help with your turnout issue.  That is, check the rivet and movable rail contact for power.

Hope this helps.


P.S. sorry for the bad images, I hastily put this reply together.