Annoyed Grunt
I’ve been having an issue with the double slip on my layout. I’d wired up the Seep switching motors, and followed the leaflet that came with the point, but I had this strange issue with a short. Every time the loco I had got over the points, it’d short out. I’d hear it spark, and the controller would show an overload protection kick in.
I re-wired bits countless times, and followed along with my multimeter but couldn’t fathom it. Then I suddenly noticed what was up:
Can’t see it? No, neither could I. Took me a whole week to suss it. Basically, the curved point at the bottom is not set to turn out; i.e. the top blade is touching the top rail, making both the rails leading into it the same polarity! Because there’s insulating joiners between it and the double slip it’s all fine until the loco runs over onto the curved point. As soon as two pickup wheels are on it, there’s a short.
So once I spotted this, I flicked the point over and ‘lo and behold, it magically works! Well, the loco will run until the wheels are all on the curved point, at which point it stops dead, as there’s no power that end yet. I’ve been slowly working along, ‘debugging’ and fixing before moving onto the next bit.
I just need to add more power feeds, then wire up the point motors. Then wire in the CDU. And make the point control panel. But then it’ll be operational, and it’s on to gumming up things with glue and ballast.