More hobbies, more problems....

[fabiodriven]

OK, I need some serious assistance with this one. I just picked up this layout. She really is a beaut. I bought it not working knowing that I was going to have to go through it. I took a look underneath and yeah, it looks like a big bowl of spaghetti. It has two separate lines and all of the street lights and buildings light up. Here are my issues.

The PO told me that the two lines used to run opposite each other. One would roll one way and the other the opposite direction. One day a spotlight that shines on one of the buildings burned out and one of the lines started going the wrong way. In other words, both lines rolled the same way after that.

The back of the transformer has 4 outputs. Track 1, track 2, DC out, and AC out. It's obvious what the track outputs are. How do I know which accessories are DC and which are AC? The layout has 10 switches and a ton of street lights and building lights. I don't even know where the switches get their power from.

There are a bunch of pieces of track that are "isolated" from what my neighbor told me. I guess it means you can park a train on that particular piece of track and shut that chunk of track off so that train can be parked. How the hell do I operate that?

I'm honestly baffled here. This is my first train set in a while, but I have had more than one before. Nothing even remotely this complex though.

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[HondaClaw]

Woah man, I thought I was the only person with randomly mixed hobbies.. I was never able at this age to go to far into model railroading but I have a passion for it.. I still have my first Lionel Set.. Anyway due to my lack of experience I can't really help, I'm not good with electronics..

[big red in iowa]

id say the only thing ac would be trailprotrailpro controlers, everythinig else would be dc but just my guess

[fabiodriven]

UPDATE-

There are 12 switches, not 10.

I got a train moving on one track but when it gets to one of the switches it reverses direction. It goes in a counter clockwise direction until it gets to this particular switch, then it wants to go back the other way.

[SYKO]

sorry dude cant help I would get so fustrated I would just buy a godzilla costume and make me a new movie out of that set! lol

[Vealmonkey]

Fabio, I don't know how familiar you are with electric, but you have to think of the whole thing as a circuit. You have to complete the circuit to have electrical flow. The dead areas are so you can switch the trains electical flow to keep the train rolling. To maybe simplify and understand it better, draw an oval track. Now, put a switch on each side and connect the 2 together. Now to get the train to go through a switch and into the middle section, if you didn't put a dead area in the middle, the electric would run into each other and dead short or the train would stop dead. That is what the dead areas are for. As you would power the train through the middle section, as you pass over the dead area of the track, you have to reverse the electrical current to keep the train moving forward, because as you reach the other side of the oval, you have essentially switched the direction the train is travelling and you can't do that while keeping the current moving the same way. Do you understand what I'm getting at? If you do, then where ever the dead areas of track are on your setup, than that is what they are meant to do, give you an area to switch the direction of electrical flow to keep your train moving forward. You can't park on a dead area, for once you do, your train won't move again as the dead areas are created by plastic "insulators" that won't conduct the electricity from one track section to another. I hope this helps. I had a train layout that I hand built when I was younger. If you need to, I can pm you my phone number if that may help you out.

[Vealmonkey]

Too bad I don't live closer as I could come teach you how to play with your trains. Your set up has some good and bad things as I look it over. Without seeing it in alot more detail, I'm not sure how the PO has the wiring schematic set up. The atlas directional flow swtiches are pretty standard. It's a shame that there isn't a better mounting set up for your switches and transformer to make it more user friendly. I don't see any decent wiring markings to show what wires are for what building or light. It will be a bear to trouble shoot any electrical problems. It's a nice layout though. It will take some time to master. You will probably end up drawing you up a track schematic and labeling the swtiches and marke the powered track sections which will give you a better idea of what you have going on. Just remember, showing you have power won't tell you of the direction of flow though!

[fabiodriven]

I gotta read that a few more times and sleep on it Pat. Thank you so much.

The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking I'd be best off ripping that friggin spaghetti out and starting fresh.

[Vealmonkey]

Ripping the wires out, may be more frustrating than you realize, but it's up to you. I wish I could draw on here and I could better explain what I mean. If you can picture the oval, say your current is running in a clockwise direction. Then you put a switch on each side of your oval so you can switch the direction of your train while it is still moving forward. Where the track meets in the middle of the 2 swiches on the inside of your oval, well, you currents meet and get messed up, dead short or make your engine do funny things, etc. So in the middle of the 2 switches, you have to have a section of track that has no current running through it. That way as your engine passes over the dead section of track, you flip your current direction switch, which would be one of the green switches, in the opposite direction, which changes the flow of your current and it makes your engine transition through the switch area in a seeming smooth and uninterrupted motion.

[fabiodriven]

If anybody is interested, I have a thread going at another forum and I'm trying to take everything everybody is telling me and figure out what to do. This is going to be quite the undertaking- http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=8512

[hoosierlogger]

at least all of the wires are red, green, or black. That should make it slightly more confusing. Wow dude you got your hands full with that one. Good luck