we're going to go over some basic troubleshooting techniques with a
multimeter and other devices to check your components on your model railroad
so let's get started with this right now
I'm Tom Kvichak and this is Toms Trains and Things this channel was
created to help other modelers who are in need of guidance in pursuing their dream
of building a model railroad and in the past couple of weeks I've been getting
some emails from viewers who said they bought some train sets on eBay and were
having problems with them they're not running and they wanted me to
troubleshoot them for them and I said well I'll show you how to do it I tried
to step through it with through emails but it's kind of hard doing it that way
so I'm gonna do a video on it showing you how to troubleshoot problems
on your model railroad and basically the first thing I'm gonna do is show you how
to do it on a train set to see if you got power on tracks to see if the
locomotive is working and other things that you want to take into consideration
these people have bought train sets on eBay thinking that they were good
apparently they don't work and one of them said that the contacted the seller
and the seller says well you're not hooking it up right and I just I just
wrote back to him I says well that's the canned excuse from everybody that sells
something you're not hooking it up right but I know these people were hooking it
up right because they stepped me through some of the things that they've done
already and it appears that they are doing it right so I'm gonna go through
this and show you how to troubleshoot to see if your locomotive is working to see
if your power pack is working to see if your wires are working and I have some
back here I have the locomotive and I have the the EZ track now the ones that
they were talking about were Bachmann and that one person showed me a power
supply it's a little bit different than this one but I'm gonna use this one
because this is the Bachmann one have and I'll show you some of the MRC
ones I have too and show you how to troubleshoot with those also so if you
would like to see more videos like this go ahead and hit that subscribe button
and go to my channel click right below the video where it says Toms Trains and
Things click on that and that'll take you to my channel page and click on
Playlists and that will show you all the playlists that I have I have them
grouped into different categories by topic so it's easy to find so if you're
looking for something on soldering you'll go find it if you're looking for
electrical project you could find it if you're looking for DCC you'll find it I
have over 40 playlists on there where the videos are grouped in two categories
so you could find them easily so take a look at it and let's get started with
this with the multimeter since this is a model railroading for beginners episode
I'm going to do this for DC only I'm not gonna be doing DCC troubleshooting so
this is gonna be for DC only and we're gonna use a multimeter it doesn't have
to be one like this it could be a less expensive one you could pick one up
anywhere hardware stores Walmart anywhere even on my Amazon Shop store I
have a few multi-meters on there and we're going to use this Bachmann one
here and you could see it has the plugs in the back for the power for the little
wall wart and it has a plug right here for the track power now most of the
problems that I think that everybody was having was whether to find out if the
transformer was bad that the wire was bad or the connection on the track was
bad or the locomotive was bad so we're going to cover all of those aspects
right here the first thing I'm going to show you is about the locomotive I have
a steam locomotive here that I picked up at a thrift store a few years ago there
was many there were many items there it looked like the the modeler passed away
and his wife unloaded everything at the thrift store so I
picked up quite a few locomotives and some buildings and some other supplies
there but I had no idea if they ran or not luckily they all ran one thing you
could do if you go somewhere and you find a locomotive
even at a train show take a 9-volt battery just a 9-volt battery and this
is only going to work on DC and just put it now you can see on the tender here
you have these little wipers on the wheels okay that is an indication that
one set of wheels is is going to one track and the other set of wheels is
making contact with the other track so you can't do it on here but do it on
here and just put your 9-volt battery up there and just see if it turns now this
is not going to give you anything for speed or how smooth it runs or anything
like that but you'll be able to see if the locomotive runs and if there's
anything stuck on there like is see if the the gears are stuck or anything like
that so that's the number one thing to troubleshoot to see if your locomotive
is working now don't try this on DCC because it won't work and you'll notice
on DCC there will be a little plate on the bottom and it'll say DCC onboard so
only on DC continuing with the locomotive if your tender has these
wipers on it right here that means that one set of wheels is making contact with
one track and the other set of wheels is making contact with the other track and
I'm going to show you how to do this right here we're going to put this on
owns and I'm going to put my lead on this side right here and we're going to
take this one right here and you'll see that you got twenty two point eight ohms
okay that means you're going through the motor on this side here you got point
three ohms so that means these wheels right here and these wheels right here
are on the same side of the motor these wheels over here are insulated so
we're going to go over to the other side okay so we'll go on this one right here
and it shows approximately 0.5 ohms so that means these wheels right here are
making contact and these over here are not so you can see it says O L that
means there's no continuity between here and here and let me put the probes on
these wheels right here so I could show you these are metal wheels on here but
if you look closely down in here you'll see that there's an insulator between
the axle and the wheels and so there's no continuity right there now on the
locomotive itself you're going to see you're going to read the coil that's in
the motor and you'll get some kind of reading on this one here it's twenty two
point seven ohms so you know that there something is working there and all of
this is without power on and the next couple of tests I'm going to do the same
thing with out our on but I'll go back to this battery
right here and you'll see now if you get it in the right spot on the wheels you
could run it for a little bit to test it up like that and you can see that it
runs freely that we've got a section of ez track right here
and what I did I use this for many different things so I I cut this here
but I'll show you how to test it with this connected if you have a small piece
of wire and we're going to check this connector right here you'll see that it
has three slots in here the Center one isn't being used so you put this little
jumper between the two if you didn't have this thing disconnected now I have
these little attachments on here but what you would do you would put these on
your plug and that won't that one's a little bit big so I can't really do it
and test it with this jumper on the back there to see if you have continuity if
you have continuity on there and what I will do is figure out which plugs or
which pins on there are the good pins okay so this back one is that wire right
there and then this wire right here
should be the second one so they're not even using the first plug on here so
though you're getting your power from right here and right here so what you
want to do you could either do it this way you can you can do it two ways you
could leave this in here jumpered across both pins but you got to make sure it's
in there good and tight and this is probably a bad example with this one
because that's too small let me see if I have a wire is just take your meter and
your probes and go like that and if you read and if you have a reading on there
and on this one you're not going to get it because I have it disconnected but
you'll see something like that and that tells you that the wire is good that
your whole cable is good all the way up through to the plug now if you don't get
a reading and it looks like this or you get something where it says mega ohms
then your wire is bad now the connectors on the track and it's basically the same
thing you just check one side with the track okay so that this connection right
here goes to that track that's good this connection right here goes to that track
and we could do the same thing on the other side this connection right here to
that track this connection right here to this track now one other problem that
you might have and you might have dirty contacts here and here so when you're
doing this right here you're not getting good contact so and we see that's 9 ohms
and that's good come over to the other wire and 10.9
ohms and you realize that you're going to be doing this through the plug
through the things on the plug because I have the wire right here so you see all
of this is good you might have a little bit of dirt or something in there
because you've seen that the resistance on one wire to the track was lower than
the other one one with the higher resistance you may have a little bit of
dirt in the contact so what I would suggest if you you could either spray
some alcohol in there and there's hardly anything that that will fit down in
there but you might be able to take that same wire and and just scrape down in
there with that wire and that might just shine it up a little bit to get good
contact in there but I wouldn't worry about it if it's just you know that you
know one ohm or a half an ohm or something like that if it was like 30
ohms or something then I would worry about it but with you know that little
bit I wouldn't worry now we know that the locomotive is good two tracks good
the wire is good and if it still doesn't run then we can assume that the
transformer is bad now the way that we can check that is we'll have to plug it
in now I have power on this little transformer here and I have my probes on
the wires but if you're you're going to be troubleshooting it you could even
bring this over to here plug this in to the track and then test the tracks
itself but I'm going to do this now putting it here is the same thing as
putting my probes on a track so you'll take a look at the meter I have it set
on DC and as I increase the throttle you'll see that the voltage increases on
it so that means the the power pack is good now whenever I change direction on
this you'll see that it changes to a negative and I'll bring it back down and
shut it off and you'll have residual power in because there's capacitors in
here and it'll slowly drop down because right now what you're doing you're
bleeding off the capacitors that's inside the power pack I just showed you
how to test the basic components to see if it does work and if you have a
problem to be able to identify what that problem is all right I have a couple of
more transformers here I have a Tech ll 2500 and I have an Ampack and model
402 now I have the Tech ll plugged in I don't have this one plugged in I'm not
going to plug in every one of them but just to show you basically everything is
the same on there on the back of this one there's an extra set of terminals
you have fixed DC accessories AC and variable DC the variable DC is going to
be what you're going to hook up to your tracks and so I'm just going to hook
these leads up right here to show you if I can get them to stick on there on the
screw well I'm testing this without having to hold it all the way you might
have to hold it a little bit but I'll turn the power on right here and I'll
increase on the throttle and you can see as I increase the voltage increases all
the way up to 18 almost 18 and a half volts now I'll switch the direction on
here and it'll and you'll lose the minus on there
so I'm going to go over to fix DC and this is a like 19 and a half and I'll go
over to the AC and the AC says 20 okay 15 just under 16 volts so basically
everything the same on a power pack it doesn't matter what the brand is or how
big it is or how small it is you're going to have basically the same thing
this one has tracked DC and accessories it doesn't have the fixed DC on it and
you know just on some of them you're gonna have three sets of terminals that
most of them you're just going to have two sets of terminals you're going to
have the variable DC for your throttle and AC for the accessories so that's
basically what you have to do to check on them with the meter to make sure that
they are working properly now in future episodes I'll show you how to do more
troubleshooting on your model railroad in DC and later on in DC see if you have
any questions or comments about specific problems that you're having leave a
comment down below or else you could contact me through my email toms trains
and things at gmail.com I have to think about it you know or else you could go
on my website and go on to contact page and you can leave a message on there
also and that will send me an email that I'll be able to respond back to you so
if you have any questions about this or any other troubleshooting about DC on
your model railroad just go ahead leave a comment or leave me an email and I'll
be happy to help you out with that settle
that's this one for right now and we'll have more on troubleshooting DC and
later on DCC so thank you
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