Walthers DCC friendly turnout bond strips

[gmpullman]

What's up with the folks at Shinohara?
I just finished assembling a junction using three #8 double slips and two #8 right hand switches. ALL the rail joints are soldered and I was under the assumption that since these are "all live" turnouts I would have electrical continuity throughout the entire assembly... NOT!
Then I read a piece on Alan Gartner's site about some early production TO's having problems with the bond strips under the ties... so off I go to check out the bond strips... what I find is that two of the double slip switches have NO bonding strips at all! Just empty cavities where they're supposed to be. The other two right hand TO's one has the strips and the other doesn't!
I ripped out my existing junction that used the old power routing turnouts so that I could have less chance of shorts on DCC, now it looks like I'm going to have to solder a bunch of feeder wires throughout this track work!
Mind you, I had planned to have several feeders anyway but I thought the turnout should be electrically live on all rails.
If any of you plan to buy the DCC friendly Walther's turnouts, be sure to flip them over and check for the metal bonding strips...

[claycts]

I bought a DCC Friendly Turnout upgrade kit.
Wire, Solder and a Soldering Iron, now I belive them.
Same problem with a 3 way switch.
Did the package have a neon sticker on it? Mine did and still needed the up grade kit.
Take care
George P.

[rrinker]

Have to keep that in mind, I just bought two to experiment with. That would have been pretty darn frustrating, to cut them in to my main line and have a chunk of it stop working.

--Randy

[Tom Bryant_MR]

Timely input. I was just at my LHS today looking at Walters-Shinohara.

I'm trying to find a description of these turnouts, length etc.

XtrkCad doesn't have anything in parm file below a #8 Walthers-Shinohara TO.

[gmpullman]

I'm using Cad-Rail and there is a library of Walthers/Shinohara turnouts there.
I bought two pairs of #10s to make a nice looong crossover and they look beautiful!

My original layout was DC blocks and I've since gone to DCC and I'm slowly replacing the problematic turnouts with the "DCC friendly" all live ones. Thats why I was so disapointed to find these missing bond strips. Returning the turnouts would be too much of a hassle and delay.

[John Richards]

While not exactly on topic, "What is the difference between" Walthers DCC Friendly Points"
and "Uninsulated" points??. I prefer the uninsulated points whether I`m building a DCC
Layout or a DC Layout.

TIA,[:D]

[Tom Bryant_MR]

QUOTE: Originally posted by centauri

While not exactly on topic, "What is the difference between" Walthers DCC Friendly Points"
and "Uninsulated" points??. I prefer the uninsulated points whether I`m building a DCC
Layout or a DC Layout.

TIA,[:D]

As gmpullman said, Alan Gartner has a good description of DCC friendly TOs. It is at http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches.htm

Alan has pictures of the Walters DCC compatible TOs at http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches_walthers.htm

As Alan admits, DCC friendly is subjective vs. objective. You will have to read his dialog. [8)]