Rolling road

[j.t.]

I am running my live steam engine on rolling road and one of the cables became loose inside connector,on checking,connector has o/heated causing plastic inside to melt leaving cable loose and alarm going off on cntrol unit.

This is second rolling road ive had with same fault even after using different engine.

I would be grateful for any assistance.

 

j.t..

[Chrissaf]

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[96RAF]

Although the rolling road is stated as suitable for use with live steam the current required is much larger than that needed to run a DC or DCC loco on a rolling road.

 

This means that all electrical connections must be secure else any high resistance produced will melt plastic. The feed wires from the track connector are soldered to one end of each slider wire. The rollers are secured to these wires by a clamp action and if any of these are loose a high resistance will be seen and heat generated, which will travel along the wire.

 

My suggestion would be if the plastic ends are beyond recovery is to make a wooden or phenolic replica(s) to locate the slider wires. Whatever you use needs to be an insulator obviously.

[Go_West]

Hi yes as said these are really for speaker terminals and are rated at 60 volt 3 amps so the live steam engine at 6 amps is pushing it a bit 

if you can look on re for a better rated terminal and change it along with the wiring then you will have no further problems.

ken

[96RAF]

I had initially thought the plastic end caps that locate the slider wires were melting but reading it again with Ken’s explanation it is obviously the track end power connector that is failing. No reason why you can’t just dismantle the terminals and solder your feed wires direct to the rails and slider wires. It’s a while since I had one apart and can’t quite remember how the wires go from the terminals, direct to the track rails or roller slider wires or both.