Shorting issue frog to closure rails using Micro Engineering ladder system turnouts

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
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I continue to find fresh reasons to dislike these turnouts. The manufacturing quality is poor. In addition to bending easily, the cut backs in the stock rails made to accommodate the points are particularly flimsy. The turnouts bend at that point far too easily. Moulding of the plastic is quite poor, lots of stray flashing. The points pick easily and the throwbar springs are not up to the task.

Now I just spent a couple of hours troubleshooting a weird shorting issue after making a fresh track connection from my yard to my mainlines.

Everything worked fine until the last join up. Then the layout shorted out. Impossible or so I thought since I have no reversing sections as yet.

Turned out the frog on one ME ladder system turnout had shorted at the closure rails. ME isolates the heel of the frog from the point rails by using plastic moulding nubs. Not so at the toe of the frog where they rely on air gaps only with the closure rails, no nubs to keep the gap open. Sure enough the gap had disappeared, if it was ever there to begin with.

I couldn’t even get a screwdriver tip in there to pry the gap open. I had to cut into the closure rail before I could fit the flat blade in and pry the closure rail back away from the frog to restore the gap.

All is now well but who knows if the other ME turnouts will show the same symptom when I power up the frog rails from the sidings. Another “feature” of ME turnouts is no power jumpers under the frog. Every siding has to have power added. If ME had elected power routing instead the yard sidings would not have shorted.

Multi Meter revealed the short after a few runs with a locomotive located the faulty turnout. The Multi Meter showed the two rails connected with less than 100% resistance but not a dead short, interesting. Disconnecting just the one side track feeder cleared the short and then a careful examination of the turnout showed the gap had closed up. Not a dead short but enough to trip t

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You might have to drop a styrene piece in those gaps to keep them from closing. That is odd the ME would make something like that. ME is up for sale. Odd it is such low quality.
Shane

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I plan to do so if the gaps start closing up. Track is not yet fixed down as I prefer to finish the whole layout before I start finalizing track positions by gluing it down more permanently. Plenty of time to go that extra step if need be.

I found three other ME ladder system turnouts with “invisible” gaps but those at least accommodated a screwdriver tip to slide the closure rai back to where they belong. The regular sized ME turnouts are fine.

It’s a real shame in part because these turnouts look really good once the stray flashing is removed. I don’t mind cutting off plastic flashing if that keeps the price down. But the turnout needs to be constructed properly or the market will respond negatively and another fine manufacturer will disappear.

ME still manufactures in the USA, which is a plus for me at least. Peco still manufactures in the UK. How they each manage the labour cost differential to China is a mystery but I’m glad they do. Kadee likewise. Interestingly, Peco charge a lot more than ME do for their turnouts. Maybe ME should consider manufacturing to a higher price point and using the added markup revenue to improve QA a bit.

I bought the ladder system because I wanted the Code 70 look and the slight improvement in yard capacity was appealing. If you don’t run trains these ME turnouts look really good as does their flex track. If only a bit more effort was expended in QA these ME products would be the equal of Peco and look better.