Zephyr DSC50 problem...help!

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J

JE78

Member
I started wiring my turnouts tonight when after wiring the first one I ran into a problem. I'm wiring my turnouts to a switchboard. After wiring the first one I wanted to test it so like an idiot I hooked the power to the switch into my jump 1 & jump 2 on the Zephyr thinking it would give me juice just to check it, well it gave me an error message of just a "c" going across the screen which means it was short circuit shut down. Now this was only on my 2nd track, my first track is fine. I removed every thing I did but I still have the "c" going across my screen. Not sure what to do to clear it. Any idea's?
 
After further evaluation I don't think its with the Zephyr. I took a section of track and separated from the layout and it worked fine. For some reason when its all together it trips the Zephyr and stops the train. I didn't do anything to the layout prior to wiring the turnouts so i'm not sure where the problem is. I went over all the track looking for anything metal on the track but its clean so i'm not sure what to do next.
 
The jump ports are for 12-volt DC power packs that you can hook in to run as additional throttles. They aren't meant to run anything off of the Zephyr. Also, Jump 1 and Jump 2 are separate (negative) terminals. When hooking up additional power packs, you hook the pack to the Jump 1 port and the Ground and do the same with the second pack (Jump 2 and Ground).
 


Yeah I knew that, not sure what I was thinking on my end. I'm just not sure what could have happened to the layout, like I said, if I section the track off it works fine so I know its not the Zephyr, its something to do with my layout.
 
What kind of turnouts are you using? You may need to insert a gap on the end away from the frog. Some turnouts are wired for what is called selective control or power routing, meaning that the direction the turnout is thrown determines which way the power goes. On these turnouts, if there is a feeder past the tail end, (the end opposite the points), a short develops as soon as the turnout is thrown. I hope this little diagram is understandable.

Turnout3-1.png
 
I replaced the turnout I wired with a piece of straight track and I still have the problem. Its strange, 5 minutes before I wired that turnout I was running a train over it.
 
Turns out I had two wires that are soldered to my layout touching so it was tripping the Zepher on my inside layout. I wired all my turnouts today and hooked them up to a separate power supply so I'm all set there. I'm still adjusting one part of my layout. The reversing loop is giving me problems so I might take it out or just bypass the part that needs reversing.
 
Both ends of your reversing loop need to be isolated. The feeders for the reversing loop need to run to an automatic reverser or a DPDT toggle switch.

If you are using a PM42 for your automatic reverser, there are special instructions on the Digitrax website on how to set up the PM-42.

Hopes this helps!
Glenn
 
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