Layout Progress w/Photos : HO Walthers Shinohara C83 spiked on Homabed

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Here’s some photos of my construction phase. Just ran my DCC bus and tonight I am planning where I will have my throttle jacks and control panel for my Digitrax system.

This is the area for my 90’ Turntable and 3-Stall Roundhouse

Here’s one of my favorites, the Atlas MP-15 Switcher with DCC and Sound - a very nice product from Atlas!

Classic open grid with risers, 1/2" ply subroadbed, 1/8" Branchline Homabed, spiked HO Walthers Shinohara Code 83 flex and turnouts. The benchwork is from Sievers.

View of benchwork, track and some test loco and rolling stock

My friendly “frog” - the pain and frustration, but it will all be okay soon… everything runs fine at some speed, but the small locos stall or short, the nail polish helps, but I want the permanent fix if I can ever figure it out…

Another view of the layout which is 10’x12’, 3 24" deep sections and one 30" section to close it off. It’s a duckunder but a friendly one if there is such a thing.

Thanks for looking …

2

That’s some handsome work you’ve got there so far! What size turnouts are those? They look pretty big (#8?).

Do you have a track plan you could post? I’m currently trying to design a layout of my own for roughly the same size space, and I just like to see what other people are doing for comparison.

3

Great shots of the bench work phase. I hope all the beginners look at these pics. I had not seen Sievers stuff before, but it really looks nice. If someone does not have a table saw, I suppose it is also much less expensive.

4

Great start and beautifull crafmanship indeed.

Now as to your frog frustration, as I replied in another of your post this frog is insulated therefore dead as far as current flow is concerned. These turnouts are short free as per my experience with them and the nail polish thing is irrelevent with them. If the loco stall it is because it is a very short wheelbase engine the remedy is to feed the frog, not easy as it is very small but possible.

Jack W.

5

jalajoie, thanks and thanks to the other nice comments.

You are correct, and I was also thinking that the nail polish thing was irrelevent because its dead, so the nail polish is meaningless.

What I think could be happening is that the Trix Mikado’s Tender wheels (they have electrical pick-ups on their tender wheels) could be shorting out on the flangeway rail just to the left of the frog point in the photo above. I used the NMRA Gauge and the wheels are dead nuts on the entire loco.

If I am not mistaken, on the Walthers Shinohara DCC Friendly turnout, because both routes are always live, is the flangeway rail just to the left of the frog always powered or is that track dead too? And there is plenty of side play on the wheel trucks on these steamers. If the flangeway rail is powered, I wonder if the short is happening that way. If so, what if I glue a thin rail height piece of styrene on the guard rail so that when the tender enters the frog side it is guided away from the flangeway rail and presses against the dead frog only to make the transition through the turnout?

Seems simple, but confusing [%-)]

6

It is important to know whether you are seeing short circuits, stalls, or both.

The only possibility I see for a short to occur is just past the insulating rail gaps at either the frog throat or beyond the frog point. In both cases, there are rails of opposite polarity very close together. It is possible, but not likely, that an extra-wide wheel or metal portion of the locomotive is contacting both rails at once. The nail polish (to extend the dead section) would be a temporary fix.

This is my beef with dead frogs with flow-through power - in an effort to keep dead frogs as short as possible, you end up with 2 rails of opposite polarity very close to each other - close enough to trigger short circuits under the wrong circumstances. If you use powered frogs exclusively, the frog insulating gaps can be pushed further away from the frog, which enhances the frog’s mechanical integrity and prevents the short circuits from a wheel touching both rails simultaneously.

Stalling is a much more likely condition here. The fix is to attach a feeder to the frog assembly (may be easier said than done), and feed the feeder through an electric contact on the switch machine or throw that sets the frog polarity correctly.

my thoughts

Fred W

7

Mastiffdog

I really don’t know if it will help or not. I am now looking at a #4 code 83 Shinohara with the insulated frog and can’t see how a short can happen may be with a #6 it is a different mather.

Anyhow the frog and flangeway on these turnouts are one piece (electrically speaking) so everything is dead (or live if you power the frog). I will do some test and try to short them, I will also see how a #6 behave when I will go to my club this coming Saterday and will let you know my findings.

Jack W.

8

Mastiffdog,

I don’t know if you solved the problem however I finally tested a #5 Walthers/Shinohara code 83 at the club and was unable to produce a short with these new DCC friendly turnouts. I used Inter Mountain 36 inches metal wheels set for testing, could it be the Trix wheels profile don’t match the NMRA RP25 standards?

Unfortunately we don’t have #6 at the club so may be the results could be different.

Jack W.

9

It would be useful for you to know:

a. which axles permit transmission of power by closing a circuit.

b. if the frog is truly isolated and if the routes are/not powered as the manufacturer intends. That means metering it with the probes at different places, the frog among them.

Armed with the knowledge implied above, you can then do a series of trials at different speeds until you find at which point the first power-routing axle causes a short…if a short is being caused at all. Then, without moving the locomotive, and shutting down power, try to look at the entire scene from all angles until you can determine if the wheels are bridging between two polarities.

In your photo above, the place that is likely to cause you the problems, based solely on my experience, is immediately past the right hand set of gap spacers, just outward of the frog point. That is, find the very frog point, and move right in the photo until the plastic shows. Immediately to the spacer’s right is where the short is going to happen. I have never experienced a short on the other side of the frog, at the closure rails.

If this turns out to be the sore point, so to speak, cut a gap with a cut-off disk exactly 1/4" to the right of the right hand set of spacers in both rails. You extend the insulated frog that way, which means exacerbating your stalling problems with the short locos (sorry, can’t have it all!), but you will solve permanently all of your shorting problems.

BTW, this is a severe problem on curved turnouts, particularly the #7 and up. Longer wheelbased steamers, especially rigidly mounted drivers with a middle one blind, will almost certainly have that blind driver hanging way inward on the curve and you’ll bridge the two rails at once under that blind tire. Happened with my 2-10-4 and the 4-4-4-4.

10

That puts me out of the curved turnout business then. What I