The term "DCC friendly" refers to each point rail having the same polarity as the adjacient stock rail. With an "unfriendly" turnout, both points have the same polarity, which means the open point is the opposite polarity of the nearby stock rail, and a metal wheel flange passing through can bridge the gap between them. The resulting momentary short usually will not interrupt a DC system, but will cause DCC to shut down and re-boot.
I had a lot of the older Shinohara turnouts on a past layout, which did sometimes cause shorts once I converted to DCC. Following an article in MRR, I converted them to "DCC friendly" as I recycled them to the current layout. The learning curve is fairly short, so once you convert a few, you can speed things up by doing them in batches.
The weak point of the conversion is the soldered connection of each point rail to the copper-clad throw bar, as this joint is stressed as the point rail is pressed against the stock rail. Especially since we tend to use a stiffer wire in the Tortoise machines. Yes, you can adjust the throw by moving the fulcrum but less pressure also means less electrical contact, so its a delicate balance. This can be offset by installing a thin jumper wire from the point rail, across the mini-rail joiner to its closure rail.
All that said, I've found the converted Shinohara turnouts to be generally reliable, but failures can occur, so from time-to-time, a point rail will need to be re-soldered. Just be sure you place these turnouts where you can reach 'em.
Jim
To fix that you should have just gapped the two rails beyond the frog. There was no need to fully isolate the frog.
Anyway, good to hear it has been resolved.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Be aware that there is a contact strip under the throwbar. You can see the tab sticking out in your picture. There have been reports of both sides making contact in the middle of the throw causing a short. If it creates a problem you can pull it out while it is installed.
Rick
You can use live switches with DCC as long as you insulate the frog at the end of the turnout.
The relevant part of Wiring for DCC on Walthers/SHinohara turnouts is here:
wiringfordcc.com/switches_walthers_old.htm
Couple of things to do, starting with isolating the frog.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi. What you have done is to isolate the frog, and this is a well-known and often repeated 'fix'. In fact, this is what the Peco Streamline Insulfrog and Atlas Custom Line turnouts are. The Atlas frogs can be powered, I believe, but they must have a wire attached below the frog and the wire switched somehow to reverse polarity.
The frogs are also severed, but they have plastic spacer/insulators in the gaps. It happens that the Fast Tracks turnouts made with PCB tie strips must have gapped frogs. Instead of the Dremel cut-off rotary disk, I use the technique suggested by Tim Warris in his videos on Fast Tracks' site. I purchased a jeweler's jigsaw and a package of the very thin filamental blades. These sever the rails nicely and leave a very tiny gap. They don't close, either, not under any circumstances.
I appreciate that you took the time to take photos and to show what you have done for the benefit of others. Thanks for doing that.
Hey everyone,
So recently I was doing some track work on my club layout and installed a Shinohara switch to act as an additional siding for the consisted diesels that cannot fit on the turntable. We just had a bucket of track and switches to choose from so I went ahead and picked one without much thought and put it in.
The next day I came back after all the adhesive had set I went to test the switch only to realize the switch was shorting out that section of the layout. I was confused at first since the layout was fine if the switch was lined normal but when it was set to the siding it would short out. I then realized my error, I had installed the older "power routing" style of Shinohara switch vs the newer version with an insulated frog to prevent shorts from happening.
You can tell the style of switch I had from this photo showing the metal bars connecting the moving points of the switch.
I did some research online and found some helpful reading about others who have found ways to make these types of switches DCC friendly, but they were very complicated and above my current understanding. But finally I found a helpful YouTube video that showed the process of turning one of these older switches into a modern Shinohara equivilent. In the video he gets a bit more advanced than I needed however, so here is the quick and simple fix that worked for me in this situation, with it being a dead-end spur track at least.
I pretty much only had to use a dremel to cut the rails as shown on both sides of the frog of the switch. This instantly made the shorting that was happening go away. The only additional thing I had to do at this point was run a track power feeder to the section of rail that was isolated now on the siding. One of the rails was still powered on the siding from the switch so that was nice that I only needed to run the one feeder wire. Now the diesels can pull on there without dying and the layout operates without shorting out!
Hopefully this helps others out if you're in this situation and don't want to tear out your freshly installed switch.
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