Murphy's Law

There are two laws that apply to model railroading:

1. Things only go wrong when guest (attendees) are present and what goes wrong can not be duplicated once they leave.
2. Murphy's Law - whatever can go wrong will go wrong and if more than one thing can go wrong the one that causes the most damage (or is hardest to fix) is the one that will go wrong.

During the last OPS session all of the switch position signals (and the operator's repeater signals on the fascia) at Swift Run stopped working.  I suspected it was a failure of the electrical switch associated with the Swift Run tortoise.  Of course this is the least accessible tortoise on the layout.  As you can see below I was barely able to get a picture if it!

 The Swift Run tortoise can just be seen on the center left of this picture take from under the helix.

 But before I try to either replace or repair this tortoise I needed to make sure it is the problem.  Luckily I have a "Get Out Of Jail Free Card".  Or at least a "Get Out Of Hell Free Card".  Or maybe it is just a "Limited-Stay-In-Hell-Pass".

Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free-Card

I created these wiring diagrams for all of the terminal strips on the layout.  It is times like this that they come in handy.  At least they cut the trouble shooting time down by not forcing me to retrace all of the wires to remember what they are for and where they go.

After about an hour of trouble shooting I am now pretty sure it is the electrical switch associated with the Swift Run tortoise (Murphy's Law is in complete force.)

My next effort is to try and get to this tortoise with a multimeter to validate that the electrical switch is not working and hopefully determine that the unused one is.  If the unused one is good I might be able to solder new wires to it and run these to the terminal strip without having to remove the tortoise.  If the unused electrical switch is not good or I can not get new wires soldered to this tortoise then it will have to come out.  That will be another posting!

Wish me luck!