Peco electrofrogs shorting ????

[e-paw]

Before I started to hand lay my turnouts I installed about a dozen or so HO Peco electrofrog switches. Now that I am running trains I have discovered a problem with them. In the normal "straight through" position they are fine. Once I change them to the diverging rout they short out. As in the pic below I tried to solve this problem by installing jumpers and isolating the frog with a cut off wheel, But, no luck. I have insulators placed on both rails of both paths. I had purchased them without any of the packaging or paperwork with them and was wondering if there is some kind of internal jumper wired in the ties that could be causing the short. I really don't want to remove them if I don't have to . I was hoping that someone had a fix for this that didn't require me to remove them.

   

Thanks for any help with this...

[rrinker]

With the frog isolated with those cuts you shouldn't be getting any shorts at all in either position. The only place you can really get a short is of the back side of a wheel brushs the open point, since on the Electrofrogs, both point rails take on the polarity of the closed one. All you should have now is a dead frog. Without the cuts you would need insulated joiners or gaps in at least both rails leading away fromt eh frog, but completely cutting the frog works too.

Got a track nail, or a cut end of wire, or something like that that worked its way down in there? Sometimes the silliest things...

--Randy

[e-paw]

Thanks for the thought but I have already tried that. The short occurs as soon as I move the switch points even with no rolling stock on the rail. I can see it with a ohm meter with the power supply disconnected. That is why I'm wondering if there is some kind of power routing built into the switch.

[Steamtrains]

There is internal wiring in Electrofrogs. It's a jumper between the wing rails and the frog, but you have "neutered" it with those cuts. You seem to have a crossover set up here. Are the frog rails from the other side also isolated..?? Also, where is the power coming from..?? Are there any power feeds in there somewhere..?? All these factors might play a role in shorting out when the switch is thrown.
Don't ask me how I know... :oops:

[BR60103]

Did this happen immediately after the track was laid or has it developed?
Have a look at the point end -- Peco sometimes has extra contacts there and one might be dragging. But that shouldn't cause what you have.
Is the changeover switch working?

I just looked at one of mine, and you cut the rail awfully close to the frog. Mine has wiring underneath almost at those places. (What code is your turnout?)

[e-paw]

Well this problem was something that I noticed the first time I tried to use one of the crossovers. All of the Pecos have the same short. I cut the same spots on the frog of the 2nd switch in that crossover. I have feeders soldered to the underside of the stock rails on every switch. I am running straight DC and everything is fine in the straight position. It's an odd problem, and I have never used Peco switches before. I'm beginning to think that removing one to see how it ticks may be enviable.

[Steamtrains]

e-paw....Could you post a picture of the whole set up..??

Is there a possibility that one of your power feeds is bridging both the stock rail and the diverging rail..?? In your picture on the far left I think I see what may be your powerfeeds, and the one feeding the straight closure rail seems to "continue" to the diverging stock rail....or maybe I'm not interpreting correctly what I see there...

[e-paw]

That's a jumper that goes from the stock rail to the switch point. With out it the points are dead. Even with it cut the short is still there.

[steinjr]

Hmm - I got the same symptoms as you got when I added jumpers from the stock rails to the closure rails without first removing the underside jumpers between the closure rails and the frog (see electrofrog drawing on the web page below):

http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches_peco.htm

But you cutting the rails on both sides of the frog (and presumably all the way through the rail without any connection) should have compensated for that.

Are you sure that your short actually happens in the frog of the uppermost turnout, and not e.g. in the crossover between the uppermost turnout and the lowermost turnout (i.e. where the right stock rail from the upper turnout meets the right frog rail from the lowermost turnout) ?

Is there an insulation joiner or a cut somewhere preventing a short here if one turnout is thrown and the other isn't, off to the right of the area shown in the picture?

Smile,
Stein

[P5se Camelback]

This thread has convinced me to continue to handlay my own turnouts!

I am not savvy enough about electricity to have to deal with problems like this one!

It took me a decade or more to eliminate such "turnout Induced" short circuits ... and that was when I started laying my track by hand and using isolated, power-routed frogs, wired from underneath!

Good luck, E-Paw! I hope you find the source of the problem and find a way to overcome it, short of tearing all of the track out and replacing it!

[rrinker]

They ARE power routing, but cutting through everythign like that should have completely neutered them.
This picture from Allan Gartner;s Wiring for DCC site shows the Electrofog: [img]http://www.wiringfordcc.com/pecoelec_C75-2002_r90.gif[.img]

The jumpers marked 'cut' are the ones you cut to isolate the frog - which you've done by cutting throught he frog rail. There's nothing on the points side that could cause a short as soon as the points change positon. The only palce you could be getting a short here is between the curved stock rail of the pictured turnout and the frog rail of the other one off the picture to the right if both turnouts aren't set for the same position - if you're feedign power to the frog and beyond based on point position, and your bus lines are such that the 'top' rail on both tracks is, say Rail A and the 'bottom' rail is Rail B, then you will have a short if one turnout is set diverging and the other is still on straight.

And Bil - you could always use Atlas, no problems in many many years! Apply feeders to all 3 side, no power problems.

--Randy

[e-paw]

What I decided to do was it cut all of my jumpers out and solder up all the cuts that I did. the only thing that remains are the feeders soldered to the underside of the stock rails. This returns the switch back to it's original condition (unmodified). I disconnected the power supply from the rails and removed all locos from that block, that will ensure that I don't get any false readings.

   

Now I was able to see how these thing work. I found that both point rails right up to the wing rails are common to each other. The frog point is isolated from it.
So this means that my jumpers are causing the short. In this state the point and wing rails are unpowered.

   

I am wondering if cleaning off the paint from where the points meet the stock rail will be a good enough connection to power that section of dead track . That's one solution, another is to install a single pole double through switch wired to the point rails to set the polarity and power that section. The last idea that comes to mind is to find where the connection is that makes it all common and cut it clear and solder new jumpers. That connection is probably in the frog and would require the most work.

[rrinker]

Interesting, as these seem to be wired more like the old Shinohara/Walthers turnouts, or the old ME ones. I guess Peco changed the design at some point, these results do not jive with the pictures and explanations for Peco Electrofrog (or Insulfrog for that matter) on Allan's site.

Although I did guess at it in my first reply

--Randy

[e-paw]

Well Randy I have been sitting on some of these switches for 10 years or so. I got them from the owner of JK Hobbies in Bayonne NJ, years after they closed up shop. So who knows how old they are. They could be an earlier version. But, on with the story... I took the path of least resistance and cleaned off where the point rails and the stock rails make contact and Holly jumpen pogo sticks,,,It lives The only thing now is that I must have cut an internal jumper that handles the power routing feature because I have a few dead spots.     If I solder in a few jumpers like my temp ones, the whole mess works the way it should... I am going to have to put in a little work on making the cross over look good again. It now has a certain Frankenstein quality to it. But, that's for tomorrow. I only wish I had the paper work on this bunch of turnouts, all this could have been avoided.

[rrinker]

Feed the rails past the frog with power-routing contacts from your operating mechanism - this should be pretty much the same way your handlaid turnouts work. If you don't operate both sets of points for the crossover from the same control, you'll get a short a split second before the ensuing derailment if one is set to cross over and the other is set to straight through.

This bit from Loy's web site is how I remember Electrofrog turnouts: http://www.loystoys.com/peco/about-electrofrog.html. This is how yours were working, which is why the jumper from stock to closure rail caused a short.


--Randy