Yeah, many switches are designed so they will only carry current through to the track it's set to serve. That's so a locomotive coming from the back side will stop if the switch isn't set right--hopefully before it hits the points and derails. Which is nice. It can also be nice to cut power to a locomotive on a siding just by setting the switch to serve the main line--especially if you're like you and me, and consider DCC more trouble than it's worth. The hassle is these switches carry track current through the rail, so the switch points and the rail where the points touch it have to be nice and clean all the time. Otherwise, it doesn't work, because dirt doesn't conduct electricity. Wire every stretch separately and you have to make sure the switches are set right, or trains coming up the back side will derail. It isn't idiot-proof. But you aren't depending on good contact at the switch points for power, and that's a good thing. Sorry the throttle crapped out on that one power pack. But you might consider hooking your accessories--lights, switch controls, and everything but trains--up to it. Power packs only make so much total electricity, and running trains and accessories off the same one can be a strain on it. That can also lead to the trains slowing down when you throw a switch, or operate another accessory. Since you have a power pack with a bad throttle anyway, you can wire the accessories to it and run the trains off another power pack which isn't straining under the load--because it only has to power trains. A power pack doesn't need a working throttle just to power that other stuff. The accessory power doesn't go through the throttle control anyway, so that's a way to bypass the part that went bad and get some more use out of the part that still works--the transformer.
This does not answer every problem, but I am concerned when Curt says he has wired the double crossover with blues on the inside and whites on the outside. That is not correct. Imagine a miniature of yourself standing between the two tracks and facing the double crossover. Arbitrarily on the track to your right connect a blue wire to the rail immediately to your right. The farther rail of the track to your right then should get a white wire. On the track to your immediate left the rail should get a WHITE!! wire. The farther rail on the track on the left side should get a BLUE wire. On the other side of the double crossover ignore that there is a double crossover and connect additional feeders so that any the same color is common to the color connection on the first side of the crossover. Running your finger along a rail from one wire connector to the next wire connector should go to the same color. This is true whether you trace straight through or through the crossover to the other track. As I said the choice is arbitrary as to which color to start with. Once you have chosen make sure that as you trace along a rail with a blue connector that you never connect anything but another blue connector on that rail on the rest of the layout. Tracing along a rail from the first white connector, you should never touch anything but another white connector. This will eliminate shorts. Shorts may have been the cause for power pack failure. Rick Brodzinsky's photo of the double crossover with the color connections shown as blue and white is exactly correct. From Curt's description he has the colors on one side of the double crossover reversed. the rail should get a white woire the rail should get a white woire
Sorry about the two short lines at the end. Ignore them. I didn't see what happened to them when I tinkered with them in the reply composition.
I just check my wiring and I have just what was explained. When I trace the rail to the other end I have the same color at thr far end, so still baffled Sent from my SM-G920R4 using Tapatalk
Yes, you will have the same color when you trace straight through. But now trace from one track through the crossover to the other track. With the way you described your connections, you will go from a blue wire to a white wire, and from a white wire to a blue wire.
