Been having a bit of a problem with oxidation on the point blades of a turnout. A quick dab with a copier pen fixes it but was wondering if a frog juicer would fix more permantly, turnouts already wired for them.
I’ve got a couple of Shinohara #8 code 100 curved turnouts and I’m thinking of juicing the frog for reliable power as the bronze wiper under the points isn’t the most reliable.
Things work great when first installed but over time you need to tweek things a bit, too much and you have a failure.
Might be an application for ‘conductive lube’ forming a barrier layer that the wiper pressure can displace but that slows or even stops oxidation…
For my Shinohara switches, I soldered a wire to the bottom of each of the point rails and also the frog. It’s all connected appropriately under the table.
Ed
The problem is at the point, not where the joint is.
The jumper wires are more usually soldered between the point rail and the stock rail to solve the problem of poor continuity between the point of the point rail and the stock rail. The frog of course can have only one power connection as that must be switchable for polarity. If you power the frog you could power the point rails from the frog. Electrofrog turnouts, in effect, do this if the frog is powered. ME turnouts do not route power under the frogs.
Frog only gets its power at this time from the point but a wire is in place on frog for frog juicer which I have not bought because everthing worked so well till now.
Yes. That’s why I soldered a wire to the point. It then doesn’t depend on making a physical contact with the stock rail.
Nor does it depend on that joint where you don’t think there’s a problem.
Ed
That is exactly what I’m doing, except that I make the electrical connect between the two below the layout, rather than having it show from above. Also, there will be less stress on the solder joint as the points move. Or so I believe.
I prefer to have my points with the same polarity as the adjacent stock rails–no chance of a short, then. I can then, at my option, narrow that hideously wide points gap that looks so ugly.
Thus it is impossible to feed them from a powered frog, since the frog cannot deliver two different polarities.
I DO have some of the older style Shinohara switches, where they connect the points with a metal “bridge”. These obviously MUST have the same polarity, and can be fed from the frog. But then you get the possiblity of a short on the open point rail and will have problems if you try to narrow the points gap.
I have yet to decide what I will do about that. I HAVE them, but I have not installed them.
Ed
The later type is all I have, these are code 70 which were never made so called DCC friendly. I have powered the frog manually before but since this is DCC, I thought frog juicer as mistakes were made on the last layout which was DC so things happened but you could flip the switch the other way, now with DCC if that was the case the world would shut off.
My frogs are powered “manually”, but that’s because I placed a microswitch at the end of the throw bar. When I throw the switch, the microswitch changes the hookup.
The World Famous Tortoise has some contacts that will do the same.
As far as I know, the wiring for the switch is done EXACTLY the same for DC and DCC. In fact, my “layout” is wired as a DC layout, but one of the two cabs is DCC. It’s a big no-no, but as long as you don’t make any mistakes, everything is fine. And, hard to believe, I haven’t made any. Yet. That’s mostly true these days because I just am not running DC anyway. So the DC power pack is never switched on.
That does bring up one solution to a mixed DC/DCC layout: NEVER turn on both at once. Makes sense to me, as I see no point in running both types at the same time.
Ed
[quote user=“rrebell”]
Been having a bit of a problem with oxidation on the point blades of a turnout. A quick dab with a copier pen fixes it but was wondering if a frog juicer would fix more permantly, turnouts already wired for them.
just curious, what is a copier pen?
There are pens used for copiers, basicaly felt pens filled with alcohol, great for cleaning wheels whis is why I bought them.
And here I was confusing them with typewriter ‘scratch’ cleaning pens, which were like a sheaf of thin glass fibers that could be projected from a ‘pen’ body like those tubular white erasers…
Powering the frog is not the best way to solve problems with the points.
As suggested above, solder feeders to the actual moving points themselves using very flexible wire. Yes it’s putzy, but I never regretted doing it for an instant.
There is no problem with the connection between the frog and the point rail, the problem is between the point rail and the stock rail. The closure rail and the point rail are conected, these ones with issues are the older type with the metal bridge in two places on the point rail, not the newer ones with railjoiners at the closure position.
THOSE need the points to be connected to the frog.
Instead of using the points to feed the frog, what you should do is use switchable contacts, either on your switch machine or a microswitch, to feed the frog.
Then you add another wire to feed that metal bridge, and connect it to the same point as the one that feeds the frog.
The metal bridge HAS to be the same polarity as the frog.
THEN it does not matter whether the points make good electrical contact with the stock rails. They are fed from electrical contacts, same as the frog.
If the points are RELIABLY electrically continuous to the frog, you can skip the wire connection to the metal bridge. Rail joiners don’t count.
Ed
Thats why I asked about the frog juicer as I have never owned one.
Me neither.
Running power to the frog without using the points to do it is a definite improvement. That’s what a frog juicer does, according to its description. You could do the same thing with contacts on a switch machine or a microswitch.
You MIGHT still have electrical problems at the points, since they still rely on that contact OR they get fed from the frog through the connecting rail joiner (closure rail to points). Neither of those are great.
Which brings up the possibility of wiring the points, as mentioned.
Ed