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NCE Switch8 issue


jpendle

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Got a Switch 8 for my layout.

At first I had problems as Railcom was turned on on my Z21. I turned Railcom off and the Switch8 booted properly. I got the waggle on the 8 segment display. I started adding points, I got 4 points working but once I connected the fifth the problems started. There was a short so I disconnected the frog switching on my Tortoise and power cycled the unit. It still doesn't power up properly. I disconnected everything and hooked up the Switch8 directly to the z21 with nothing else connected, it still doesn't power up properly, but the point outputs still seem to work.

 

Any ideas, or gave I broken it?

 

Thanks,

 

John P

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  • RMweb Gold

What does the 8-segment display show when it does not power up properly? If all's OK it should be showing the "wig-wag", but if it's not happy there should be 3 bars indicating it's not receiving DCC information.

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That's right is shows the 3 bars rather than the wig-wag.

It started working again, but then I got a short and even after clearing the short it stopped again at the 3 bars. It doesn't seem to have very god short circuit protection.

 

Thanks,

 

John P

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  • RMweb Gold

On may layout I use a separate pair of bus wires for my Switch8s. I have a PSX circuit breaker for the track, but the accessory bus wires bypass that.  So when a short occurs, track power is cut (by the PSX) but the DCC Command Station and accessory bus remain live. In this way the Switch8s never see track shorts, and more importantly, I can still change points, This is a useful feature, as most track shorts are caused by points set the wrong way with locos then shorting on the frog. 

 

It might be worth sending an email to NCE via their website to ask the question about your problem.  They're usually very quick to respond.

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Would definitely recommend a separate DCC accessory bus.As RFS said track shorts then won't have any effect on your ability to switch points.Also use a circuit breaker for track bus otherwise a track short will close down the entire system.

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