I’ve settled on Peco turnouts and track (N scale). I’d LIKE to be able to wire my turnouts up so if a locomotive approaches the turnout from behind, and the turnout is set the wrong way (the way that will cause a short or derail), instead of running into that, the locomotive stops. I’m not sure I can do this with Peco Insulfrogs or Electrofrogs (right now I have two of each, to experiment with). I THINK I can do it with my Bachman EZ track turnouts. Anyone know how to do this?
Well, with HO Peco that would be the electrofrog. I don’t know if one can assume the N are the same.
I think you can too, but it will require some pretty major surgery. Or I think it would be easier just to make a dead section of track on the point side of turnouts that are powered from the turnout motor.
With the Bachmans, the electricity goes the same way as the train. So you cut the track a few inches away from the turnout and if the turnout is not set to let the train go through (coming from the back now), then the engine passes the cuts and is in a section of dead track.
With the Peco Electrofrog, I THINK that if you do this, the engine passes the cutout and creates a short, so that is not what I want. Yes the train will stop, but this is DCC and I don’t want the short, it will cause the other engines to stop also, and you have to restart all of them.
One option, if you’re using Tortoise motors, might be “The Hare” that just plugs onto the Tortoise contacts. It can do any of a number of things, including automatically throwing the turnout if a train approaches from the “wrong” way.
Here’s the scoop: http://www.tonystrains.com/technews/hare-ng.htm
Peco Insulfrog are power routing so only the route to which the turnout is aligned will be powered (unless you also have a feed on the frog side of the turnout. So if you have blind spurs you will get what you want anyway. If you have a feed on frog side make sure it is at least a locomotive length from the frog and then put a gap between the feed and the frog. This way the section between the frog and the gap will only be powered when the turnout is aligned correctly. This applies to HO - I assume N will be the same.