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No Power To The Track

Gil wants advice from others in the hobby and asks:

“I laid my track, and it all ran smoothly. I wired up points – OK – all tested prior to Ballast – when dry went to test with Loco – guess what no power to track. I thought I would remove the Ballast from areas of the power contact, but still no go. Any thoughts would be appreciated.”

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3 Responses to No Power To The Track

  • Kevin Ching says:

    I always solder the wires to the track as I have seen some ballast get under the track and isolate the power clips from the track

  • Tim Clint says:

    the one thing you could do is get an ohm meter and start at one point and every 4 or 5 feet see if you have continuity. Put the meter on 1 ohm scale. This has to be done on each rail. Check each turnout to insure that power is continuous through it. All this should be performed with power off and all equipment and power feeds disconnected. Then with power on, check across the rails for power at various points. You should see power at least where the buss feeds come up. Check the output from the supply. Do all this first without any equipment on he tracks as there could be a short with a piece of equipment which will effectively bring the power to 0 volts.

    Hope this helps.

  • Gil Sangster says:

    Thanks for assistance – tried all possible situations and after a thorough inspection found that some connectors were dirty and/or rusted – following some soul searching I decided that I would scrap all the track etc, use new joiners and Flexi-Track where possible and now everything is OK!

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