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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by jchain</i> <br /><br />gchenier: Thanks for the advice, I'll try it tonight, but a lot of your terms are new to me. Sorry for being a 'dummy', I'm kind of new to this model railroad world, but could you define some of your turnout terms: frog, center position, stock rails, feeders, point end. <br />[/quote] <br />Feeders are the pair of wires that bring power to the track. <br /> <br />The frog is the V shaped section of the turnout where the two inside rails of the diverging tracks meet. The frog end of the turnout is the end that branches into the diverging tracks. <br /> <br />The points are the flattened ends of the moving rails, they press (one at a time) against the inside surfaces of the stock rails to guide the wheel flanges into the selected route. When the point touches the stock rail it makes electrical contact to the stock rail. The point end of the turnout is the single track closest to the points. <br /> <br />Some turnouts are made with the points each permanently electrically connected to their respective stock rail by another path within the turnout construction. These types will have an insulated frog, one with some of its pieces made of plastic so that the inner rails of the two diverging tracks never make electrical contact to each other. Where the frog actually tapers down to a sharp point (not the same piece as the moving points, terminology allows only one word for different parts), this area is also plastic. With this type of turnout there is no need for rail gaps at the tracks leaving the frogs, but their drawback is a locomotive power pickup wheel momentarily loses electrical contact as it passes oder the frog. This can lead to stalling. <br /> <br />Other types of turnouts are made with the frog all metal to avoid the stalling problem. Since the two inner rails of the diverging tracks thus come together at the frog and make electrical contact, they effectively have shorted the rails together, this must be overcome by placing electrical gaps (small gaps between rail ends that still allow the wheels to cross over. Electrical power to the frog is selected by the position of the points - the entire frog and both rails leaving it are electrically connected through one of the points to the stock rail that the point has been switched to. You can see now that if the frog end of the diverging track that continues into the oval does not have electrical gaps in the rails close to the turnout frog end, when switched to the stub siding the points will have placed a short circuit across the rails. Power feed to the oval ends up at both the point end and the frog end, and powering the frog end is not allowed because of this shorting effect. <br /> <br />So to make a passing siding as you have done requires 2 turnouts with their frog ends connected together through the sidings and point ends each connected together the long way around the oval. Both sidings need electrical gaps somewhere between the frogs, and the power feeder must connect to the oval somewhere between the two point ends of the turnouts, not at the sidings between the frogs. <br /> <br />The center position is simply holding the points halfway in their travel as you switch them so they cannot touch either stock rail. This is the easiest way to see if this is your problem. Or just look at the frog construction - if they are partially plastic with the rails embedded in the plastic, this is not your problem. But if the frogs are all metal and the two inner rails of the two diverging tracks actually come together and touch metal to metal, you have a non-insulated frog and need to install the electrical gaps in all the rails in the passing sidings. You can get plastic rail joiners for this purpose, or cut a gap in the rails with a small thin saw or a dremel cutting disc (wear eye protection), then glue a small piece of stryene into the gap and file to match the rail profile. The styrene keeps the rails from expanding in the future and touching again.
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