Powered vs Unpowered Frogs

[Anonymous]

I use a Lenz DCC system on my pike. I note that some turnouts are "DCC Friendly." Does this mean that the frog is powered or unpowered. My current system has Atlas Code 83 turnouts. Most of my steam locomotives have no trouble with the turnouts but my 0-8-0 Spectrum stops on some of them. All I can think of is that the frog is unpowered.

Jimbo

[cacole]

A DCC Friendly turnout is just advertising hype to make people think it is something new and different. Peco, Shinohara, and Atlas turnouts have always been DCC friendly, which means nothing more than the fact that they do not require any modification or special wiring other than what you would do on a DC layout, to use them on a DCC layout.

[mcouvillion]

Cacole and JimHubbard,

I think the recent "DCC friendly" turnouts are those where the frog is isolated from the attached rails and the point rails, and the point rails are jumpered to the adjacent stock rails. The purpose is to get the point rail that is not touching the stock rail in either thrown position to be the same polarity as the stock rail all the time. With DCC, some metal wheels may be out of gauge just enough to touch the open point rail and the near stock rail at the same time. Dead Short. On Digitrax, its "Beep, Beep, Beep". By making the point rails the same polarity where they are close to the stock rails, the short will never happen, therefore "DCC friendly".

Mark C.

[cacole]

We have nearly 100 Peco code 100 Insulfrog turnouts on the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club's HO-scale layout, as well as many Atlas turnouts, and have never had any shorting problems with any of them. We run metal wheels on practically everything, too. If your wheels are in gauge, you should have no problems. Our layout is wired so people can run both DC and DCC. I can see no real advantage to these "DCC friendly" turnouts as explained by Mark C., other than preventing stalling because of a point rail not making good contact with the stock rail, as sometimes happens with Atlas turnouts because of their tendency for the rivets to loosen, or sometimes with a Peco turnout if dirt gets between the point rail and stock rail. I probably would have used DCC Friendly turnouts when the layout was built if they had been on the market at the time, but the old turnouts have been just fine so far.