Peco Insulfrog Nscale Turnout Short?

[Herc Driver]

Hi Guys,

I need to tap into the wealth of experience here and ask this question.

The set-up: Peco Insulfrogs exclusively used. Track in question is where the mainline and passing line converge at a turnout. Short is sometimes strong and long enough to alter DCC signal and cause the Zephyr system to move all loco's at once at top speed except the "shorted" car or engine. Short only occurs with passenger cars equipped with metal wheelsets for "lighted" operation, I haven't noticed it occurring with any engines. Short doesn't always occur if the car passes over the problem spot at a moderate speed, but almost always occurs when the car is moving slowly over the turnout.

I've used Peco Insulfrog's on my layout and have noticed when a Walther's passenger car passes over the frog, not only does the car ride up (indicating the frog isn't deep enough for the size wheel that came standard on the Walther's car) but it shorts causing a noticeable spark as it transits across the frog. Since theses are supposed to be insulated, the only thing I can think of is for an instant the wheel makes contact with both the right rail (running a train clockwise on the layout) and the left rail coming off the passing track.

I checked the car's wheels for gauge and although they were correct, I opened one pair of wheel just slightly to match the other three wheel sets.

My questions are: Am I right in thinking the wheel is touching two rails simultaneously causing the short, and sending every other loco on the layout crashing all over the place? Has anyone had this problem with Peco turnouts before and developed a fix?

I haven't filed the gap between all the turnout rails yet, but will look into that today, just to make sure there's not a metal burr from one rail that could be contacting the wheel as its on the other rail. But wouldn't it be better to file the plastic frog area deeper to all the wheel to run through the frog instead of up and over as it does now (this occurs on all the Peco turnouts on the layout)? Although I like the very positive "snap" action of the Peco's, they've given me some problems with engines running through the turnout. I've had two turnouts that needed to be shimmed dead-level to stop engines from either derailing or shorting when they passed through the turnout, so I feel I'm missing something in my understanding of what care or precautions these turnouts need to run reliably.

Thanks!