I added lots of wiring to distribute power to all areas of my 1 lane wood track. The track is modular in 3 panels, so in addition to the power supply in and controller connections, there are banana plug jumpers connecting from the central power area to the outer panels. It has lots of tight curves where I've had trouble getting the copper tape to stay down on this gritty paint job, so there are numerous power taps in the curves in case the tape gets kinked or cracked which would restrict power flow. There's no excuse for current not getting to any part of the track. 18 guage copper stranded everywhere.
So I fired it up, and it was not a complete success. 2 of the panels work normally. The third panel will not get clean power to the car anywhere. The cars "stutter" to varying degrees everywhere on this panel, and ONLY on this panel, often grinding to a halt. (it gets worse the slower the motor turns) I checked that there is no crossed connection from red to black anywhere. My multimeter shows no short, and without a car the voltage is fine. I tried disconnecting various parts of the power distribution on that panel. I tried connecting only directly from the controller to the copper tape near the car to eliminate any intervening bad connection. Same behavior every time. So, I'm left wondering if the network of power tap connections on the backside is somehow interacting with the power supply and motor in some weird way? Is this behavior familiar to anyone?