Old vs. New Atlas Turnouts- shorting problems

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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Hi, there.

I’ve been working on a small portable layout, HO-scale, built almost entirely with Atlas snap-track. Most of it is old, left over from my early teens (20+ years-ago, OK? I’m not counting…), and is thus brass. I’ve got a few new sections of track, and around six newer nickel-silver Atlas turnouts as well. I can switch between DC & DCC (most of my locos don’t have decoders yet).

Everything has been working relatively well until I started trying two relatively high-end acquisitions- Lionel Veranda Turbine, and BLI E-7. When running them at low speed, they will both occasionally short when running over the frogs of the old turnouts, but I haven’t seen them doing-so over the new turnouts. At high speed, the short apparently lasts a short-enough time that the DCC doesn’t react by shutting down, but with such a small layout, slow-speed operation is more common than high.

I guess I can invest about $75, and a few hours of time to replace the old turnouts with new (which, again, I haven’t noticed any failures on.) However, I was just wondering if anyone has suggestions for in-place changes that could be made?

The old turnouts have an identical appearance to the new Atlas snap switches, apart from the obvious brass vs. nickel-silver rail. They’ve got an insulated frog, and do not do power routing. The Wiring For DCC page lists the Atlas turnouts as being ready for DCC as-is (http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches_atlas_roco.htm). That is, it appears that you can do some soldering for reliable connections (which I haven’t had problems with), but they are properly insulated to prevent shorts.

What it looks like, to me, is that the two high-end locos have a slightly different, probably flatter, profile than the other Proto 1000/2000, Atlas, Athearn, and IHC locos I’ve got. All of the latter run well across all the turnouts at whatever speed. I’ve toyed with the idea of filing off the back side of the rails on the divergent side of th

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you might want to try and power the frogs…it’s simple and will only require a few pieces of wire and an atlas relay…if you e-mail me I have a wiring diagram drawn in microsoft word I can send to you in an attachment to show you how to wire a frog using the Atlas relay…Chuck

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cwclark has one possible solution. You are not getting a short, just the opposite! I have constant trouble with Atlas tunouts and 4 axle locomotives. When one truck is on the (non-powered) frog the other is on the point rail (the one that moves) and it is sometimes also dead because the rivets that allow it to pivot work loose just enough to provide unreliable conductivity. Bingo, suddenly both trucks are not powered, the locomotive stops. If the flywheels provide sufficient “coasting” to get one of the trucks on powered rail the decoder “reboots” and everything is back to normal. I have found that my Peco turnouts do not suffer from this same defect so I am swaping them out. Many of my Atlas turnouts have frogs that appear to be made from an insulating material so the powering the frogs option is not an option for me. If your turnouts have metal frogs then your solution is the one cwclark proposes.

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Sorry, but there is definitely a short- the Command Station goes off-line and beeps the short indication. As soon as I move the loco a little, the Command Station goes back on-line and everything starts up.

Powering the frog would be rather interesting, as well, since the Atlas snap switches have a plastic frog. [:D] Chuck, you should be able to send me an email through the forums with my current profile settings- I would be interested in seeing the diagram if it is significantly different from the ones referenced in my first link.

Powering the point and closure rails isn’t a problem here- I’ve verified with a VOM that they are both successfully powered correctly at all times (i.e., the rivets are not that worn, yet.) There are very clear diagrams for this I can get off the afore-mentioned Wiring for DCC site, if this ever becomes a problem.

Again, under DCC, the Command Station is making it VERY clear that there is a short in this situation. “BEEP! BEEP! BEEP”, and lights up the signal light for problems.

Brian Pickering