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Peco Insulfrog and crossovers: I Just want to make sure about this before I lay some track

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  • Member since
    July 2017
  • 71 posts
Peco Insulfrog and crossovers: I Just want to make sure about this before I lay some track
Posted by Nevin on Saturday, December 23, 2017 11:53 AM

I'm building a new section of my railroad and this time I decided to go with Peco Insulfrog turnouts since I now have keep alive circuits in all my locomotives.  I have always used live frogs in the past and wired them by feeding power to the points and gapping beyond the frog.  With these I don't have to, correct?  I can just hook up two turnouts into a crossover with metal rail joiners and put the electrical feeders anywhere I see fit?  There are no wyes or loop tracks, just a couple of sidings and a crossover.  

  • Member since
    February 2005
  • From: Vancouver Island, BC
  • 23,330 posts
Posted by selector on Saturday, December 23, 2017 12:04 PM

Pecos are power-routing in the insulfrog variety (for certain. I haven't investigated or looked at the electrofrog variety), so the frog rail on the diverging routes only get power when the divergent point is against its companion stock rail.  You should be able to join the two turnouts, if the geometry works for you that tightly, on their diverging routes to form a crossover, assuming your approaches are roughly parallel and properly spaced (so you don't need weird curves or kinks to get it all to come together mechanically). The only time you may run into a short is if you have one turnout for diverging and the one opposite set for through traffic.  You'll end up with a conflict in phase AT THE FROG (which is insulated, so no problem....except) where the two frog rails separate at the black plastic spacer.  Sometimes a metal tire bridges those two very tips and you'll get a short. You can take your chances by cutting a gap a bit further out, or live with covering one of the two rails for another 1/4" with clear nail lacquer.

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