I have five feeder tracks located through out the layout, using Unitrack from Kato. What I have done is use a Kato 3-way extension, to connect three of them together. Purchased another power supply, to connect the other two feeder tracks to. Now was just told that I could connect several of those 3-way extensions together, so that I only would need one power supply. But when I do that, part way through the layout the power light on the power pack, will go dim, and then of course the engine stops running. But if I disconnect two of the feeder tracks, then I do not have a problem at all. So I am confused, can somebody explain to me, what I’m doing wrong. And give suggestions on how to fix this problem. I have checked and all of the feeder tracks peices are going the same way. Steve
mabie you are over loading the circut or asking for too mutch electricity beleve me i hooked too many things to one power pack and all of the rid lights on the circut board was red good thing the circut board is in the train room mabie you need the walkaround whitch i want to get ssssooooo bad you can run two trains on one track with that too
There are some questions that need to be asked. Are you operating straight DC or attempting to modernize with DCC (Digital Command Control)? The following is information you may find helpful. Two things to consider when wiring up a layout. The first is: Current only goes where the demand is. For example, you have your locomotive on the inner track of a double track main. The current needed to turn the electric motor will only go to the one locomotive. The second is: If your throttle or transformer is telling you there's a problem and the circuit light is showing red...you have a short. In other words you could have two wires delivering both positive and negative current to the same side of the track. The #6 Kato switches are designed to power route which means it shuts off current to one side of the switch while the points are aligned to the other side. I keep hearing that #4's are power routed... if you so choose. Something about the way you wire them up and what screws you use. I have no actual experience with these as they are to tight a radius for my operations. The best way to wire your layout is to use a two wire bus and run it underneath the table directly below your track. Drop your wire feeders down from each side of the track and tie to the corresponding wire below. Wire feeders every four or six feet apart is what I use to keep the current at a constant level of availability. Edited add on: After rereading your original posting I thought it best to respond to having two power sources hooked into the same track. This is not a good idea. Never hook in one power source with another. The flip of the reversing switch and you can short out the layout as well as damage the transformers. When using two different power sources make sure the tracks they serve are totally isolated from each other. Check for conflicting wire drops or better said look for the positive and negative wire...making sure they aren't connected to the same rail. This should get you headed in the right direction. I hope this helps.
If the problem goes away when two of the feeder tracks are unplugged, suspect the solution to be found there. Try turning the feeder tracks around one at a time and plug them in. See if the trouble goes away. Martin Myers
Well I discovered my problem, I must have had a reserve loop or something similar because once I removed the right hand side of the Y in my layout, and made a continous curve, I had no power supply problems at all. But darn I wanted a Y in the layout, to connect to my yard section of the layout. This is a very crude drawing but this is all I have available to me at the moment. So what do I need to do, to get to my desire results? I am running DC so that I can learn most of the basics now, sometime later I will consider DCC. Steve
"Y's are tough to wire. I have a wye on my layout along with two reversing loops. To make this happen I use DPDT, (Double Pole Double Throw) toggled switches. On one of my transformers I have two reversing DPDT slider switches that handle the reversing moves for me. I can go into more detail later if you need it. The point is: A wye can be done but you need to know your electrical wiring. There are some excellent wiring books available and I would suggest you pick-up one of theses. Nothing like having a constant source of wiring information at your finger tips. Have fun with your new layout.
I think the main problem is that any time you have 2 separate power supplies, you cannot have them connected together anywhere on the layout. It looks like the wye may be the main problem. But still, you could have a simple oval of track and without keeping each power supply separate from the other by rail gaps, you will get short circuit when you change polarity on one of the packs.
