I'm Me-e-e-l-l-ting

I think I've figured out the Atlas switch machine problem.

As mentioned in the last post, the electric coil in these things gets very hot very fast. Just 3-4 switches in quick succession is enough to make the outside of the plastic case hot to the touch. A few more and the plastic case will start melting inside. Once that happens the plastic pieces that move inside can get jammed causing the machine to fail.

And of course, your natural response to having the switch machine fail is to run the switch a few more times to see what's happening. That's what I did with Switch 4M (middle tier, #4), thus making the machine so hot that the case is now irrecoverably deformed due to melting.

The solution is to have pauses between each time you flip the switch -- ideally of 10- seconds or so. This is NOT a problem for normal operations, but of course it's something you have to tell kids to avoid.

I now have all 5 connected switch machines working nicely, including one replacement. I also now have a solid intuitive understanding of the internals of these, which will probably be helpful down the road sometime. As I connect the rest of the machines I'll be watching closing for the same symptoms -- and if there aren't any I'll consider this problem solved.

Unfortunately, this problem did slow layout progress. I did nothing on the layout on Wednesday or Thursday. Granted, this week was very intense at work, giving me little time for hobbies. However, if my current task had been something mindless like wiring up more track I probably would have done some of that just as a mental break from work. But with the task being the solving of a difficult problem I just avoided tackling it until Friday night.

Oh well, I'll try to get the rest of the machines deployed and the bridge completed this weekend.