I want to power the frogs of my Walthers/Shinohara code 83 turnouts. Would it be better to drill a small hole someplace and run the wire thru it and solder, or just run a jumper alongside like the regular rail?
I’ll welcome any suggestions.
Thanks,
Bruce in the Peg
Don’t Shinohara turnouts already have powered frogs like Peco “Electrofrog”???
Shinohara’s turnouts have a metal frog. Even though it gets power from the metal points toching the side rails, best recommended practice is to use SPDT contacts on the switch machine to not depend on pressure from the points alone.
Since the frog rails are electrically part of the frog, a single wire feed soldered to the frog rail is very simple.
Walthers turnouts, while made by Shinohara, have a metal frog casting. It is insulated and electrically dead to make it ‘DCC friendly’. With these, some short wheelbase / non all electric wheeled engines will stall .
To shorten that gap best recommendations are to drill a #62 hole part-way into back of the switch machine, tap an 0-90 thread and insert an 0-90 brass screw. Once firmly inserted a wire can be soldered onto this post for a secure electrical connection.
The screw head can be removed or left on (4) clearance for the soldered wire connection needs to be done in the users roadbed.
I did this on my Walthers switches, both the DCC friendly and not. I soldered a wire across the bottom of the frog rails. To do this, you have to remove some of the plastic of the ties. There are, if fact, four pieces of rail at this location. At the factory, they’re supposed to solder all these together–I found out that that wasn’t always true–usually, but not always. I used teeny phone wire, about 26 gage, I think. It was just a tail dropping down under the layout. If necessary, I added a heavier wire for a longer run. I also soldered teeny wires to the point rails so that they didn’t need to make a good electrical contact onto the stock rails. All this went to a SPDT micro switch controlled by the throw rod.
The key for me to do this was using a resistance soldering outfit. I believed that a regular soldering iron would melt the ties too badly. It worked very nicely.
Drilling a hole through the rail would, I assume, have to be done vertically. You’d only tag one of the four rails and would depend on the factory doing their job of soldering.
I strongly recommend doing this. I have ZERO stalling on points and frogs.
Ed
Ed
By the way, may I say that ALL of my DCC friendly and “unfriendly” switches have frogs made up of sections of rail. They are not cast. Perhaps Walthers has recently changed to cast frogs. My switches were installed maybe 9 months ago.
Ed
I also just soldered wires to the bottoms of most of my shinohara frogs. Remove some plastic with a very sharp knife, check for continuity with an ohmmeter and go to town. Not all of them are powered yet but they are ready.
On one or two I soldered to the side of the guard rails but you should still make sure that they have connectivity to the frogs.
Not the best photos but you can see the feeds and the jumpers from the stock rails to the adjacent rails. The photos are of code 100 but 83’s are not much different. You just don’t need to cut the rails and insert styrene for isolation. You also don’t need to replace the throwbars.
Plan ahead and leave nothing to chance.
Good luck.
Karl