I have it on good authority that Peco will be phasing out the Insulfrog and Electrofrog versions of its turnouts and that the new Unifrog will take their place(s). Out of the box it behaves like insulfrog but with simple modifications involving a wire you can make it behave like electrofrog. The frog will be metal but with gaps.
The phase-out will not be at the snap of the fingers but will take time I understand.
This will be good news for Steve Otte who expresses mild frustration when having to explain the differences and the reasons for electing one or the other over and over in the pages of MR.
Whether there are any compromises in performance between the Unifrog and the “true” Insulfrog and Electrofrog I cannot begin to speculate. But at least you won’t have to make or worry about an “epic” decision when you buy.
I have already written more than I know. Others are welcome to chime in with info or opinions.
Apparently they do not come with jumpers installed between the point rails (the article refers to them as ‘switch rails’) and the closure rails. That is an oversight AFAIC, but not everybody thinks that the jumpers are necessary.
Yeah, I’ve read also about these changes coming to Peco. Upon closer examination, it appears the Unifrog version may suffer from the same issue that the Insulfrog version does, where some wheel treads may short out the metal rails of opposite polarity near the plastic frog.
I’m slowly stock piling electrofrog now before they are eventually phased out.
I commented on the Peco Unifrog back in October in another thread. At the time, I emailed Peco and their answer seems to indicate that they are re-tooling to just have a Unifrog which will replace the Insulfrog and the Electrofrog.
If you wire the Unifrog like an Electrofrog then there should be no shorting issue. I was going to use Electrofrog anyway, so using them in this manner changes nothing. People using them as Insulfrogs might have the same issue that Insulfrogs have, though until someone has some actual for sure ones in hand and measures the spacing we probably won’t know. it LOOKS like the thin sliver of plastic is the same size as the Insulfrog, but there is that metal tip that migth help guide the wheels over better than on the Insulfrog design.
In the end I think much ado about nothing, and everyone will just wonder why Peco made two different lines all this time and didn’t switch over sooner. Though one thing is that the Unifrog is NOT power routing like Insulfrog, so I really think this change will affect Insulfrog users more than Electrofrog users.