LEGO at Hafhead.com: Perpetual Duplo Motion

This is the Duplo start/stop track section. It operates much like the monorail start/stop track- the control rotates a full 360, with stop, forward, stop, and reverse positions located 90 degrees apart from each other. The red beam in the center of the track section slides from side to side with the rotation of the yellow control, pressing the control buttons on the underside of the Duplo locomotive. There are two buttons on the bottom of the train. Pressing the left button makes the train go forward, pressing the right button makes it go backwards, and pressing both together stops it altogether.
It is fortunate that Lego allowed the timer to be reset via the bottom buttons on the locomotive- I had originally thought that the only way to reset the timer was to press the button on the top of the train. The purpose of the timer is to make sure that a child doesn't leave the train unattended until the battery runs out. They had to make it ignore the buttons on the bottom when those buttons only reversed the train or told it to continue in the same direction (belive me, we tried that method). But if the train hits a stop it will stay stopped and so that's OK for battery conservation. If the stop turned into a go then it was because someone manually turned the control while the train was on it. Under normal circumstances, this means that someone is actively playing with the train, so the timer can be reset. This is the loophole that the machine exploits.