I am a recent owner of a well water system. I have learned to turn the pumptrol lever to off and then move until it makes contact and hold. The pump comes on and I continue to hold until I am past 20 on the gauge. I then release and it goes to automatic. The pressure continues to rise to about 40 and holds until I use water. The water pressure is fine at first but then goes to zero and the pump does not turn back on. Am I doing something wrong or is the pumptrol faulty? Thanks for help

Sounds like you have a faulty pump control if you have to hold the contacts manually to start the pump. Change the control out. Good luck, Tom

We replaced the pressure switch with the same type. It has a start position which you hold until pressure builds past the 12 psi kick-off. The pressure regulator is a 30/50. Now the switch seems to be working better than the original one, but we still lose all of the pressure after the faucet runs for a few minutes. After the pressure goes to zero we turn the faucet off. Then we flip the switch to start, move it to auto when it hits 20psi. The pressure builds to 42psi and then does not go any higher. It holds this pressure until we turn on a faucet. I sat and watched the pressure gauge for one of these cycles. After we turned on the faucet the pressure slowly dropped to 30 psi. The regulator engaged. Pressure increased to 32 psi and I heard water girgle in the tank. Then the pressure drops to zero pretty rapidly. We also replaced the breaker box at the well tonight because it was quite rusty and we wanted to eliminate the poor connection. Thinking it may be a source of power drain.
Any advice on a next step will be greatly appreciated.

"We replaced the pressure switch with the same type." Did you replace with a Square D Pumptrol, (see image)?

Yes, we replaced with Square D Pumptrol.

Does the pump kick on every time you make a draw?