short on peco turnouts

[Anonymous]

all the trains i run short out on the frogs.I was told to use finger nail polish (clear) but this still doesnt seem to work. any ideas please.               dwes

[cacole]

Do you have insulated rail joiners on the two tracks that diverge from the frog?  If not, you're creating a short circuit when the locomotive or metal rolling stock wheels touch both rails at the frog.  We have over 20 Peco turnouts on our HO scale club layout and we have never had a shorting problem or had a need to use nail polish or anything else with any of them, because I insulated both inner rails.

[selector]

I have found that I don't like having to repeat what amount to temporary corrections to a design fault.  In the case of the Peco turnouts that give me a shorts problem, I simply use a cut-off disk, as thin as I can find, and cut a new gap outboard of the frog rails' plastic spacer, about 1 full cm away from the spacer.  Try to place such a gap so that at least two sets of tie spikes are retaining the section that ends up being isolated electrically that way.

This gap in the rail allows the wider scale wheels to move further away from the frog point, past the black plastic spacer, so that the tire surface can't possibly bridge the two closely set frog rails...which is what causes the short.

Painting those two rails is just a two week fix for me.

[Texas Zepher]

all the trains i run short out on the frogs.I was told to use finger nail polish (clear) but this still doesnt seem to work. any ideas please.

From the finger nail advice I assume that you are talking about insulfrog turnouts??.  If that assumption is true, then there is something wrong with the way you are applying the fingernail polish.   If you are talking about electrofrog turnouts there are other wiring/gaps issues that must be dealt with.  Please describe the exact problem in some more detail so we can help.  Otherwise we are just guessing and possibly throwing out more confusion.

[Nagrom1]

I think I've had this problem in N scale. My turnouts are insulfrog. My Kato would run fine, but my Athearns shorted out. After checking out the wheels, I noticed that Athearn wheels are wider than the Kato, and this wheel was bridging the gap between the two rails coming out of the frog. I used the nail polish, and the problem was solved. I only needed to apply a tiny bit to the plastic frog.

[jfugate]

The nail polish trick is a temporary fix for Peco insulfrog turnouts, but it wears off.

The permanent fix is almost as easy, and you only have to do it once. I explain how to do the permanent fix here (with a photo).

[retsignalmtr]

i have had the shorting problem on peco and atlas insulfrog switches both since i switched to dcc. same layout same switches. did the thing with nailpolish on the worst of the switches planning to do it to them all. i was reading my digitrax manual and found that the db150 reacts to shorts in 1/8th of a second. there is an option switch that will allow you to change it to react in 1/2 second. after doing that i no longer get the short problem on the atlas switches and will let the nail polish wear off on the others to see if it works there too. i don't know if the systems other than digitrax have the same thing. anybody?

[locoi1sa]

  Most problems I have found with Peco turnouts is the gap is too wide on the diverging side guard rail to rail. I shim the guard rail with a piece of .015 to .010 styrene and some paint and no problems after that. Pecos are made for the fat European flanges and thin wheel treads. The club Im in has a code 100 standard and Peco turnouts for our modules. Some of our members still run the Pizza cutters on thier locos and rolling stock. After shimming the guard rails you can see the pizza wheels lift a little but dont derail or short.

   Pete
 

[ukrailroader]

I had the shorting problem and solved it by removing the plastic check rail and fitting a new check rail made from a spare piece of rail soldered to pins through the ties and the base of the check rail touching the base of the running rail. Instead of pins ties could be replaced with paxolin strip, but don't forget to cut the copper in between the tracks.