I'm rebuilding my old layout with new track, Atlas code 55, in N scale. My old wiring, for dual cab control, was accomplished by re-reading the Kalmbach books, but I don't have an instinctive feel for electrical stuff; I just work patiently and carefully.
The old wiring was for Shinohara turnouts--power-routing or live frog, as I understand it. The Atlas are not, again as I'm able to gather. So the yard and lead I've laid so far--with four crossovers (turnouts laid end-to-end)--should, it seems to me, be just one big electrical block with power available anywhere. I grasp that with live frogs this would not be the case; I'd have shorts at every crossover. But in fact when I send power to a random pair of track feeders, I get nothing. So I isolated one small section of track (cut through both rails) and hooked it up; success!
I'm going to be cutting the thing into blocks anyhow, so it doesn't really matter, but why isn't the whole thing live when I power it anywhere? It's a yard; there are no turning sections. I suspect the crossovers, but I'd prefer not to make my cuts there (there's little space for my Dremel, for one thing). I'm just curious about what I've overlooked, and would like to be a little less dense about this. Thanks.
The Atlas turnouts do not route power, but you can make the frogs "live". There's a little brass ring that protrudes from the straight side of the switch, where you would solder the wire to route the power. I just did a bunch of these yesterday!
You have to use a double throw switch to actuate the power routing. I use a micro slide switch, which also operates the throw bar.
You can attach the track power wires to the track nearby, or to your power bus. If you use DPDT slide switches, you can also use it to turn the track power to the yard track on and off by insulating one of the rails at the diverging end of the turnout. I run DCC so I don't have to bother with that.
Hope this helps.
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Here is a photo of feeders attached to one of my Atlas code 55 #10 turnouts prior to installation on the layout:
The green wire is soldered to the ring that protrudes out from the side of the turnout for powering the frog as Lee described in his post above. The red & black wires are for powering the rest of the turnout since I use insulated rail joiners all around my turnouts to support the CTC signalling system. This is the first Atlas turnout I ever attached feedres to; for subsequent turnouts, I soldered the red & black feeders to the copper strips farther to the right of where they are soldered to the rails in the above photo (I wish they provided the nice little rings for these solder points as well). Much cleaner to do it the new way but I do not have a photo. Jamie
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Is it necessary to power the Atlas code 55 frogs? Or is it just a good habit?
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dragenrider Is it necessary to power the Atlas code 55 frogs? Or is it just a good habit?
Technically, it is not necessary but is definitely a good practice. Consider a 4-axle locomotive rolling across a turnout with a "dead" (non-powered) frog. On my N-scale #10 turnout shown above, the frog area is longer than the truck of a 4-axle locomotive, so when one of the the locomotive trucks passes over the frog, only one side of that truck will be feeding power to the motor. Should the other truck break contact for some reason (dirty wheel, dirty rail, loose contact, etc.), the engine would jerk or possibly stall. By not powering the frog, I basically reduced the overall electrical pickup of the locomotive by 25% and the pickup of one side of the locomotive by 50%. Jamie
Definitely a good practice. I'm building a couple of yards, and find that I can get more storage space by clipping the point end of the #5's. But this sets up the situation where the front truck of an engine is on the points while the rear truck is on the frog behind it. If the frogs aren't hot, you get a lot of aggravating stalls.
... ask me how I know this...