Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[FCIN]

I think my Turnouts may not be DCC-friendly!
I also had a good look at my switches and the frog is live and the points and connected
So, what do I do now?

Justin;
Don't panic!! Live frogs are really no problem with DCC any more than they are with DC. Just a matter of insulating the rails beyond the frog so that you can't get a short there. Couldn't find a suitable photo of an Atlas turnout, but this should explain what you need to do.     You simply need to place insulated joints on the rails at the location show at the right side of the image. Hopefully, you didn't solder the rail joints and if not, then you just need to pull your track and install insulated joints at the location shown.

If for some reason you soldered the rail joints there, then you need only take a Dremel tool with a cut off disk (or if worse comes to worse - a razer saw) and cut a thin gap at the location shown with the red marks. Fill in the gap with plastic CA'd in place and after it cures, smooth out any rough spots. Be sure that you are only feeding power to the turnout from behind the point rails.

I will say that the Atlas insulated joints are pretty crappy - the plastic is very soft, so you might actually want to consider cutting the rail where shown and filling in the gap then use metal joints. On all my previous layouts, I used live frog turnouts exclusively and just placing the insulated joints where shown, never had any problems.

If you wanted to go to the trouble, you could cut the rails on both sides of the frog - making it dead, but then risk short wheel-based locomotives stalling in the frog if you don't have a way to power route the frog.

Hope this helps. Don't want to see you give up or think that you need to go out and buy a whole truck load of new turnouts.