turnout alterations for dcc

[Tom Bryant_MR]

daniel1967, email me at my email below with your return email. I have something you might be interested in.

[daniel1967]

Bob, in Clarion... your words bring me hope... your experience is motivating!
I think it's time I stop fretting , lay some turnouts and see what happens for me!!!!

THANKS EVERYONE FOR THE FEEDBACK.... It's much appreciated...[:)]
Dan, on the MOHEES trackgang...

[rocketman0739]

The only reason live-frog turnouts like Walthers and Shinohara are considered bad for DCC is because DCC is a bit more sensitive to shorts. Just make sure the points are set right when your train's approaching from the frog end, and you're home free.

[Anonymous]

I use Atlas turnouts on my DCC layout and have zero problems!

I have saved a ton of money using Atlas over some of the higher priced brands.

There used to be a car company that advertised "Buy a Mercedes to show how much you earn" ... buy a BMW to show how much you know!

[cmrproducts]

PLW the MRR Myth Busters – #10 - The Myth is:

You have to modify all turnouts to run them on DCC


Well, it certainly is good to know that I have been operating my DCC layout for 5 plus years now with 150 Atlas turnouts and I should get busy modifying them so I can run my DCC trains!

I have been using Atlas turnouts for 30 years now and never had to do anything to them. Either I am the luckiest person on the face of the earth or I must be doing something wrong.

When I converted my old layout and the Club’s layout to DCC we did nothing at all but flip all of the DC toggle switches to the mainline and attach the DCC system to the old mainline throttle wires.

Now in a Club situation we have just about every type of engine from TYCO’s to Brass and they all ran through all of the turnouts.

The one thing we have done was put drop wires on all 3 ends of the turnouts. The drops are on the ends of every turnout we use, Shinohara, Pico, hand laid and Atlas. This eliminated 99% of the stalling. The other 1% was the engines fault as one of the trucks was not picking up power.

It is amazing at the trouble others claim they are having. If proper wiring practices, track laying practices are followed religiously there should be no problems with equipment operating properly through a turnout.

And this thing about Shinohara turnouts having to be modified out of the layout is not completely right. I always install my turnouts and then using the Dremel with a cutting disk cut the frog about 3/4" from the point and then just fill the slot with Super Glue Gel. That is all I do and have quite a number installed on my layout.

I really can not understand why everyone is having so much trouble. Stop over for a visit sometime and I can show you how it is done. Looks like I will have to start giving clinics on installing turnouts.


>>>All of these techniques have been proven on a HO scale home layout with over 15 scale miles of mainline track and has over 2800 feet of track (42 scale miles) total in place, so far. The layout hosts bi-weekly Operations and yearly OPTUD’s (OP Till U Drop) 12 hour sessions and has had up to 40 operators at some of these sessions. The layout runs Digitrax DCC Radio. All of these so called MRR Myths have been Busted as this layout has been in operation for over 5 years and we have proven these over and over again.<<<

BOB H – Clarion, PA

[larak]

Daniel,

If you have feeders to all three ends of the turnout with no isolation you WILL have shorts. You should at least make the turnout partially friendly by isolating the frog from the exit rails. It is a partial solution that works well. You can also use insulating rail joiners on the inside rails for some situations.

BTW the full conversion is only hard for the first few. It gets a lot easier with practice. Still takes 30-45 minutes though. You can get all of the circuit board throwbar material you need from clover house (http://www.cloverhouse.com/find/Flyer.pdf). Russ and family are nice people. They do have a minimum order though.

Also some turnouts (Atlas, shinohara code 83, peco?) are already DCC compliant so you may need to do nothing.

Follow the advice of the other posters and test one of yours.

I have a bunch of shinohara code 100. I've done the full conversion on the ones leading to sidings and partial conversion on those leading to spurs. The code 83s (yellow label) work out of the box.

[daniel1967]

thanks, from what I've read/heard it sounded like something HAS to be done, cause you COULN'T have rail A and B in contact in any way without causing a SHORT. I already plan on having feeders to all three ends of turnouts.

[fwright]

Wiringfordcc.com has many good recommendations - but they are just that - recommendations. If followed to the letter, the recommendations eliminate any inherent causes of short circuits in turnouts. But doing the recommended turnout surgery is a heavy price to pay for preventing shorts that very likely won't happen anyway.

My recommendation is to try running your trains through your turnouts without any modifications on either DC or DCC and see what problems you actually have. Observe low speed operation with your shortest locomotives and/or most difficult running.

First item to check for is momentary short circuits caused by metal wheels contacting both the open point with the back of the wheel and the stock rail simultaneously. This is more easily detected with DCC than with DC. If you find a short is occurring, does it happen with more than one locomotive or car? If it only happens with one locomotive or car, than that wheel set is likely out of gauge (set too narrow). If it happens with mulitple locomotives and cars, then the problem is the turnout and the surgery you described is called for. From listening to others on other forums, less than 20% of the older Shinohara/Micro Engineering turnouts will have this problem. Just fix those that do.

Yes, rejoining the cut metal strip with epoxy, especially if reinforced with a non-conductive material, should work just fine. One reason PC board is used is because the copper surface can be used as a sliding electrical jumper under the stock rail and soldered to the point rail.

Note that if you cut the metal strip between the 2 points to prevent short circuits, you must now isolate the frog from the points electrically. To gain power back to the frog to prevent stalls, you must add a frog polarity contact to the turnout throw mechanism so that the frog is electrically tied to the appropriate stock rail when the turnout is thrown.

Hope this makes sense and helps
Fred W

[Anonymous]

My first question would be, are you SURE you have to do anything?

I'd try testing them first -- they may not cause a problem if you use them "as is".

[daniel1967]

I am using wiringfordcc.com as my bible for track wiring. The solution for correcting turnouts that have a single piece of metal connecting point tips and hinges (old walthers/shinohara) seems very complex and labor intensive... ie: replacing the metal with a piece of circuit board. [:0][:(][xx(] I was hoping/planning a simpler solution like cutting a gap in single metal pieces and carefully resecuring them with epoxy. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dan, always working on the MOHEES CENTRAL...