As some may be aware, Peco is reportedly planning to replace their two lines of turnouts (Insulfrog and Electrofrog) with a single line (Unifrog).
Until recently, the HO North American code 83 Peco track line has only had the Diamond crossing and Double Slip Switch as Unifrog.
During the past couple of weeks I have noticed vendors are showing the Peco HO Code 83 #6 Insulfrog and Electrofrog as “discontinued” and have replace them with the #6 Unifrog.
The Unifrog has a short metal frog followed by a plastic filled gab and then bifurcating rails. Basically they look like an Insulfrog but with a metal tip frog, which I believe can be energized.
In my case, I opted to buy and stock pile some Peco HO electrofrog code 83 #6 turnouts for my main yard. But still don’t have as many as I will need so time has caught up and existing stock on #6 electrofrog code 83 are harder do find.
If anyone knows of a shop that still has Peco code 83 #6 electrofrog, please pm me as I could use a few more.
I just want my Code 70 North American turnouts so I can build my yard. They’ve only been promising those for years.
Unifrog makes no difference to me, I am using Electrofrog anyway. If the next batch I order come as Unifrog, so be it.
Peco web site still shows #6’s as Electrofrog or Unifrog. SL-8361/8361 Insulfrog and SL-E8361/E8362 as Electrofrog. The Unifrog double slip is SL-U8363.
The difference is Unifrog are not power routing. You can snip a set of jumper wires under the turnout to restore power routing. Otherwise, Unifrog are Electrofrog.
If you don’t power the frog wire Unifrog are Insulfrog but not power routing. Power the frog wire and it’s an Electrofrog but without power routing. Also, it is Electrofrog but you need not isolate the inner diverging routes. Peco does that for you.
Simple. Electrofrog work fine as non-powered except you must isolate any inner diverging rail if there’s any power source to that rail beyond the turnout. Insulfrog takes care of that for you.
They’re all easy. Non power routing is easier for DCC. Or really, makes no difference as relying on the turnout to supply power after the frog is a bad idea anyway. With one, you need insulated joiners before any feeders downstream of the turnout, with the others, just connect feeders. Neither is particularly difficult.
What I think gets missed is that with Electrofrog and similarly designed turnouts like Fast Tracks is that the gaps in the center diverging rails do not have to go as close to the turnout as possible. That can go some distance away, they just have to be gapped before any fixed polarity feeders are connected. So stretch it out a bit and make it part od the OS detection section, maybe a car or locomotive length, instead of just a couple of inches.
Right, I get it y’all like other thing than me but this is my preference. Some my welcome unifrog, but not all.
I prefer Electrofrog, partly for appearance, solid rails, and partly because the insulfrog rails can short if wide tread wheels bridge the gap. Some report it others don’t. I prefer to not go there. That’s me.
Walthers had new turnouts come so if I can’t find anymore Electrofrog Peco #6, maybe I’ll fill in with Walthers.
Shinohara turnouts are the same electrical design as Atlas plastic frog turnouts or Peco Insulfrog, except they are not power routing. Assuming Walthers makes no changes then the Walthers copies will not work in place of Electrofrogs.
Unifrog is an Electrofrog just with two additional features. First, the frog is isolated, like an Atlas metal frog, so unless you connect the power wire the frog is not powered just like an Electrofrog without a power connection. Second, Peco went the all rails powered non power routing design which works more easily for DCC than their Electrofrog design did.
Anywhere you’d use an Electrofrog you’d use an Unifrog with no modifications.
If you power the Unifrog the samwe way you power the frog on an Electrofrog, it can’t possibly short the way an Insulfrog might. There should be zero issues.
The two diverging rails are NOT the same polarity. That what makes the Unifrog like an Insulfrog. The metal tip has to be insulated to keep them from shorting together. Instead of a plastic tip, they use a metal tip so that it can be powered and never have the dead section that exists with an Insulfrog.
It really is best of both worlds, no insulated joiners needed on the diverging rails, no requirement to power the frog point, but you can, which eliminates the potential short point on the Insulfrog. The closure rails are already tied to the stock rails, which is a modification on an Electrofrog, so that saves a step as well.
Ad if you want to run DC and use power routing - snipping 2 jumpers makes it power routing like an Insulfrog, with a metal frog that can still be powered, like an Electrofrog.
Insulfrog use a big “gap” by installing an all plastic frog, as do Atlas for their Custom line, except for the Wye and curved turnouts which have isolated metal frogs with wire connection tabs. Electrofrog use no gaps and no plastic insulation for the frogs. That’s how Electrofrog can develop a shorting effect at the frog if you forget to isolate the inner point rails AND power is fed back to the turnout from the heel end as it will be if wired for DCC. If there is no power fed back to one of the diverging routes then power routing means you do not need to wire the Electrofrog for polarity change, because the diverging point rail is powered by the alignment of the points. For insulfrog the diverging point rail is dead.
The real functional difference in the Unifrog is the installation of electrical isolation (gaps) by Peco at the heel of the frog instead by the hobbyist at the ends of the inner diverging rails. That restores polarity control at the frog regardless of any power routing effects.
Leave the frog unpowered and Unifrog is insulfrog. Because the heel of the frog is also isolated in the Unifrog you get no shorting over the frog which was a potential issue when using Insulfrog in a DCC layout with no power routing at turnouts. Peco insulfrog use very short frogs. Unifrog eliminates that possible problem.
Exactly. And some have reported Insulfrog getting shorts where wider tread metal wheels touch both rails near the plastic point. There is a “fix” for that, which is to paint the ends of those rails were they are close together with black nail polish or something else to insulate them at the problem point. See photo below:
As you can see with this photo of the Unifrog point area, they look very much like the Insulfrog with a similar potential for shorts:
Many report no issues, but some do. That is one of a couple of reasons I’m going with Electrofrog. I am planning to use frog juicers which are configured for DCC running.
I’ve managed to find and order a number of right-hand #6 electrofrog recently. Now I’m hunting for some left-hand #6.
Insulfrog and Unifrog are essentially the same from that perspective. With respect it is illogical to object to the Unifrog on that basis since the Electrofrog is much worse. To make the Unifrog just like the Insulfrog you need only restore the power routing and hey presto no short.
All brands of insulated frog turnouts are much the same in terms of the size of the insulating gap at the heel of the frog. Rather than nail polish it Would be simpler to cut gaps wherever you feel you need to in order to make the isolated frog larger. With Unifrog or Electrofrog you could then power the main part of the frog which you cannot do with insulfrog.
I’d like to see a picture of a regular Unifrog turnout and not the double slip - the N scale ones fo NOT have the two rails anywhere near close to each other -0 if the bridge on an N scale one, you have some serious problems. Here is an N scale one:
The diverging side of the frog is cut at least as far up as an Electrofrog. No way is an oversize wheel going to bridge that gap between the two diverging rails. I still say the metal tip on the double slip is bigger than the plastic tip of the old Insulfrog version of it, otherwise why bother powering it, a teeny tiny dead section that short shouldn;t stall out anything.
I am pretty confident a Unifrog will work as reliably as an Electrofrog, without having to make all the modifications needed on an Electrofrog. Supposedly you don;t need to do the mods with a Frog Juiver, but I fail to see the point of buying a $20+ per turnout electronic gizmo when a @4 switch does the job just fine. If I was handlaying some crazy trackwork to replicate one of the New York terminals like Tim Warris did with the CNJ Bronx Terminal, with turnouts passing through turnouts and frogs within closure rails (there’s also a good pic of some of this at one of the big passeneger union stations, with like 6 tracks curving in from one side, passing through 7 tracks coming from another direction, which have turnouts splitting into a third direction in the middle of all these crossings). Yeah, not going to figure out all the correct SPDT switch links to get the correct frog polarity with that kind of thing, Frog Juicer all the way there.
From what I see in photo’s, the Peco code 83 #6 Unifrog looks just the same as the frog on the double slip switch. It appears they easily could have the same issue as the Insulfrog turnouts that some have reported shorting issues with and had to paint or coat the ends of the rails near the frog to mitigate the shorting.
AFAIK, only the HO code 83 cross-over, double slip and now #6 turnouts are in the Unifrog line. Eventually the #5 and #8 turnouts and #7 curved will join the Unifrog line.
I have read on some British model RR forums that there are big fans of the Electrofrog line who are very upset that Peco is planning to discontinue them all for Unifrog.
And I have the Insulfrog version here right in front of me, plus Atlas and genuine Shinohara. They all have the same “problem” which isn’t.
My point was supposed to be that the Electrofrog has NO gap, the point rails come to a point and are shorted out there 100% of the time.
I am not understanding how the need to add isolating joiners possibly to the other end of the point rails for Electrofrog differs from the need to do the same with Unifrog, assuming the point rails aren’t separated enough for particular wheelsets.
Every Unifrog is just an Electrofrog with an isolator cut at the point rails. How can that be worse than an Electrofrog with zero gaps?
