Ok. I’ve figured out most of the wiring problems I had. The only thing left is the power routing turnout problem. I found in the book where it shows how to wire around the turnout using a switch machine, but I am not using switch machines! I am using ground throws.
How do I wire around a power routing turnout using ground throws? Remember, keep it simple!
Thanks,
John
First,if you are using power routing turnouts (Peco’s),powering the frog is not an absolute necessity as the turnout itself takes care of this,providing the contact points of the rails are maintained clean.And powering the frogs becomes even less necessary if you are to run big locos that will likely jump over powerless frogs without any disruption at all.
The second simplest solution would be to have switches mechanically linked to your ground throws,so that they are actuated simultaneously in a single move.It will need a little engineering but quite feasible with a little patience.Even simpler in design would be to have a SPDT switch next to your ground throw that you would have to switch simultaneously so you don’t get an immediate short if using power routing turnouts…simple to design but I think you would quickly get tired of this.The ground throw linked to a switch is a much better way,in my opinion.
I don’t understand what you mean by “wire around”? Do your power routing turnouts also have hot frogs?
Are you trying to power the frogs as Jacktal suggests? My power routing turnouts have hot frogs and send the power to the frog through the point rail itself. When the turnout is thrown the frog becomes the appropriate polarity based upon which rail the points are touching.
OR
Are you talking about powering the tracks beyond the turnout?
OR
something else?
The track beyond the turnout is not getting power. I’ve read that the points on the rails don’t transfer the power very reliably and wiring around the turnout will provide the power to the track beyond the turnout. The only way I’ve seen to do it is with switch machines. I am not using switch machines. I am using ground throws. The only way the track beyond the turnout is getting power is if I hold it closed with pliers. So the rails aren’t contacting sufficiently. What do I do?
caboose industries makes ground throws with electrical contacts . i think you can use them like a (electrical) switch to do power routing
Johnny,
Do you need the power routing capabilities of the turnout??? Is it a part of the central design of your layout to have the track not selected by the turnout unpowered? If it is a central feature of the design, then you are stuck with contacts of some kind. If this doesn’t matter to you, then feeder the tracks behind the switch and gap behind the frog. This leaves the points powering only the frog and the respective points rails and solves the problem of intermittent contact at the point rail causing track beyond the switch to be dead…
Better is to double gap the frog and hard wire the point rails to their respective stock rails after first ensuring the point rails are isolated from each other. This will be bullet proof with the exception of shorter wheel base locos that might stall on the unpowered frog (fixing this requires powering the frog). Most of what I have described here is the definition of a DCC friendly turnout. This is a bit of a misnomer because these techniques happen to be plain old good switch wiring as well. whether you intend to use DCC or not.
Check Alan Gartner’s site on basic turnout wiring…
I’m sure some one will chime in here with an online resource for turn out wiring…
Are you getting power to the points and the frog area? Did you put insulated joiners beyond the frog? If you insulated beyond the frog, you need feeders to that track. Depending on how you want to run your railroad, you can wire the track directly to the rails before the switch, or make it a block and wire it to your cab control.
For the track beyond the turnout, simply cut a gap in the rail going up to the point and put a feeder directly from the appropriate side of power supply to that track. This will have to be done to both the rails coming out from the frog. This solution is also assuming you don’t need that track to be off when the turnout is against it.
That still leaves the frog itself unpowered, and truthfully I’m baffled. Every ground throw I’ve ever used has provided sufficient force to make enough contact on the point rail to transmit power! So lets see. 1. Our club has used micro contact switches under each side of the ground throw so that one side or the other is “on” when the head of the switch throw handle is in that position. 2. Use a SPDT micro switch connected to the throw bar. This could be under the layout and connected with piano wire or hidden in the scenery.
3. Replace the ground throws with something that has a more substantial spring and/or greater throw distance, and/or something that has electrical contacts built in. 4. Re-mount the ground throws, connecting them with a piano wire to increase their leverage and hence the tension on the throw bar. Or the drastic option - 5. replace the turnouts with Pecos whose built in springs take care of this.
Just curious now. What brand of turnouts and ground throws are these? Have you cleaned the inside of the rail and point where they contact? Perhaps you could apply some electro-conductive fluid on the rail contact areas of the points.
I cheat and use electrical switches for manual throws. Mine are at the fascia, on a little shelf below baseboard level, connected by pushrods. A club I once belonged to mounted slide switches directly adjacent to the turnouts - real ‘ground throws,’ since they looked like small bins or mini-sheds. Linkage ran from a hole in the switch handle directly to the throw rod.
Check out this site: http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches.htm go about 2/3 the way down the page to Recomendation 2 - 22 “Manual Ground Throws”. I have built and use these to power switch frogs on my layout when using the Caboose Industries manual throws. They work slick! They should be able to be used for your situation of power routing.
Thanks for all of the info. The switches are Shinohara (Walthers) and Micro Engineering and the ground throws are Caboose Industries.
What do you mount the ground throws to? I’ve been putting them on the extended ties that come on the turnout.
Some of the turnouts are working without me having to apply extra pressure.
Another problem is that I got ahead of myself and detailed this small portion of the layout before I ran the wiring. Very stupid I know.
Thanks.
Until recently, Shinohara and Micro Engineering turnouts were traditional, power routing turnouts. The more recent ones, labeled DCC friendly, are electrically a little different.
Let’s start with the traditional model first. Both points, both closure rails, the frog, and both frog rails beyond the frog are all one single electrical unit. As they came from the factory, throwing the points determined the polarity of this electrical unit by contacting the appropriate stock rail.
There are several areas where this ideal tends to fall apart. The first, which causes stalling on the points, frog, and selected track beyond the frog, is failure of the points to make good electrical contact with the stock rail. Causes could be many - a piece of ballast or dirt in the wrong place, poorly shaped point rails that don’t nest correctly, throw mechanism doesn’t hold the points tightly against stock rail, oxidation if rails are brass, hinges that cause point to rock away from stock rail when weight is put on hinge, etc. The next area of unreliable electrical contact is the point hinge. Hand laid turnouts do not usually use point hinges for this reason (in addition to being difficult to fabricate). Contact problems, if strictly at the point hinges, will cause stalling beyond the hinges, but not at the points. Note that both point to stock rail and point hinge electrical contact problems can easily be frustratingly intermittent, waiting for that one piece of rolling stock with that just right combination of weight and wheels that causes the broken electrical contact. The easiest and traditional solution, as mentioned in the other posts, is to add a frog feeder that feeds from either stock rail depending on the position of an electrical contact that is thrown when the turnout is thrown. Contacts can be added in numerous ways, even with manual throws, as other posters have described. Note that the frog feeder will not fix stalling at the points if BOTH point to stock rail and hinge electrical co