I recently purchased a Shinohara #6 three way turn out. Today I put in feeders to the one track side, and on to tracks coming out of it. When I try to use the frogs it shorts circuits. Whats going on here?
If you are not using the newer DCC friendly turnouts, you will need to gap and electrically isolate the frog. If you are not sure which type you have, simply see if the turnout in question has an all metal frog or has (the newer) plastic insulators. If you see no break in the rails, you have the old DC version, and will need to be gap to work properly. Check out the fast tracks web page. Tim has a great video tutorial on how to do this.
It is the newer one acording to your description. I bought it brand new on the internet. And I don’t get why it is giving me problems, cause when I only had teh track coming in on the right part of the switch it was fine, but when I added in the middle track it threw it off. and it onlt short circuts if the point rail is touching a rail.
I suggest eliminating the electrical feeds to the tracks leading away from the frog. If electrical feeds are needed beyond the turnout, place rail gaps between the frogs and the feeder wires…
Having always used all-metal frogs, I’ve never (knowingly) placed feeders supplying electricity on rails connecting with the frog sides of turnouts, knowing they will create a short. That was lesson #2, after the lesson of connecting “plus-electricity” to one rail and “minus-electricity” to the other.
Mark
Make sure you have the two frogs isolated if the older type, if newer this should have already been done but it is easy enough to check with a voltmeter.
Get yourself an ohms meter and check it for continuity to see where the short is located. Can you post a picture or a wiring diagram on how you’ve got it wired? But if it is like you’ve described (the newer DCC friendly) it should be an all-live turnout. In other words, you only need one set of feeders on the point side of the turnout. Also make sure your feeders are not cross-wired.
I use DCC. I had tried to run a locomotive through the turn out, but it had no power past the frogs. I’m not at home with the scanner rght now, but tomarrow I will draw and post a diagram of how things are laid out.
Get a multimeter and test the turnout…no other way around it.
David B