Crossover wiring

[Anonymous]

Are the 2 lines ( tracks ) of a crossover wired independently of each other?

If I am setting up my layout in blocks, would the 2 lines be powered by the same block? Or can I just run 2 seperate blocks thru the crossover and not have to worry about plastic rail joiners?

Sorry for being so wordy. This is a lot harder to describe in words than if I could just show you what I mean! [:)]

[Jacktal]

I have Atlas crossovers on my N scale layout and they are indeed insulated from one to the other.You could have a track doing a loop to come back and cross itself and not have to worry about polarities since it wouldn't be a loop,electrically speaking.

[Anonymous]

Do you have insulated or non-insulated frogs on your turnouts? If they're Atlas, they're insulated and are electrically separated from the each other.

What we did in our club was to have each turnout in the crossover independently wired and the diverging track was gapped. Of course, we were running DCC, so your situation might be different. By gapping, we prevented polarity issues altogether. As long as the locomotive ran across the frogs with enough momentum, it didn't cause a problem with the control station.