I found the cause of the short from earlier: I mis-wired the yard somehow and when I flipped the Atlas turnout (used throughout layout) a short. Before removing wiring, should I isolate the DCC-powered stub-ended yard? I have two turnouts’ diverging tracks connected to each other that lead to the yard–one turnout comes off the mainline and the other leads to the yard throat and engine facility. I thought to isolate one rail w/ a plastic joiner, unless that’s pointless.
I read earlier about the topic and it seems that the OP needed to isolate if running multiple locos. I plan to have a loco arriving from the main and a switcher in the yard.
If I need to isolate the yard, how to provide power to it and check for shorts?
I routinely wire the rails between all of my yard turnouts to be individually powered. I know some prefer to either isolate ladders with power-routing turnouts, especially on stub-ended yard ladders, or they gap or do something else. I also gap, and that way inadvertently mis-lined points won’t cause a short here and there when a metal wheel crosses the turnout.
However, I don’t use plastic. I eyeball the gap to be about 1mm long, and just make sure that the rail heads are well-matched for height and alignment horizontally. I won’t use plastic joiners (tried them once and hated the fat look), and I’m much too lazy to fashion plastic fillers. So, I just make slight gaps where I need them, and leave them open.
I find once track & rail painted and ballasted, can’t easily see the insulators & just leaving a gap is OK if the temperature in the layout room doesn’t vary by much to let the rail expand if the room gets hot.
Thanks everyone! Yes, I figured out the cause by removing all the yard wiring. In doing that, I figured out another problem: why I could not switch turnouts b/c they were against each other.