Greetings,
I'm wiring a passing siding on my DCC layout. The (opposing) turnouts at each end of the siding are Fast Track #5s with live frogs. All frogs are gapped and have a wired soldered to them. I'm also using Caboose Industries 220S ground throws on each turnout to move the points.
When the points are lined up for the main, everything is fine. However, when I throw either one of the turnouts, I get a short - without even running anything.
I've checked the wiring and everything "appears" fine, but - obviously, it's not. My guess is that I still don't have the ground throws wired correctly somehow.
Am I overlooking or misunderstanding something very elementary? If the frogs are gapped, I shouldn't need to gap or isolate the other rail in the siding, yes?
Thanks for the help...
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Tom,
Can you post a drawing of where the frogs are gapped? Presumably on both ends - four places.
Also, do you have the short when BOTH turnouts are set to the siding?
Are the point rails fully isolated from each other?
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net
Tom, I would suspect that you may not have isolated the frog properly in one or both cases. Did you do the multimeter short test per the video? It could be something as simple as an incomplete groove between the rails when you filed the gap on one of the ties. It could also be a wee speck of copper cladding that got wedged between one of the gaps in the rails that you cut to isolate the frog. Can you pass a piece of paper cleanly between all four gaps?
-Crandell
larak and Crandell,
Woohoo! I finally figured out what the problems were that were causing the shorts. It was actually three separate things:
#1 - I had one track feeder on a wrong terminal pad - i.e. Red wire on black. It's amazing! Even when you have things color-coded, you can still miss a lone, out-of-place wire.
#2 - I had my frogs wired incorrectly. The Fast Tracks turnouts I have were purchased off eBay and came fully assembled, gapped, painted, and the frogs wired for $25 ea. (Not a bad price when you only need a few.) So, all I had to do to install them was to cut them to size, solder the wires to the rails (except the frog), then connect them to the terminal strips.
I downloaded the diagram off the Fast Tracks web site that specifically describes how to correctly wire the Caboose Industries 220S ground throw to the turnouts. When I first looked at the diagram, I knew exactly what I needed to do. However, as I got into it more and more, I somehow got confused and kept thinking I needed to connect the frog wire of the turnout and the center contact of the 220S ground throw to the terminal strip, instead of one another. Actually, I do have both wires connected to one another via a terminal strip pad. However, that particular pad of the terminal strip is not powered.
#3 - Not only did I have the center contact of the 220S ground throws wired wrong, I also had the outside contacts of the ground throws wired backwards.
Have you ever looked at something...and looked at something...and looked at something...and thought you had it right...but you didn't? Well, that's exactly what happened. After I made the above discoveries, I ran an experiment.
[BTW, Here's a diagram of the layout to hopefully better understand what I'm trying to describe below:
Click picture to enlarge
The mainline and passing siding that I've been wiring is in the bottom center of the layout diagram.]
I placed a DCC switcher on the mainline, between the two turnouts. With both turnouts open to the mainline, I turned on my Power Cab and physically pushed the switcher through each turnout, from the frog side of the turnout to see what would happen. The result? When the front trucks of the switcher touched the frog, there was a short and the Power Cab immediately shut down and restarted. I then threw both turnouts to the diverging track and repeated the same experiment above. This time the switcher could cross the frog and enter the closed points without shorting.
I thought to myself, "Hmmmm. Seems to me that the ground throw is wired backwards." Sure enough, when I reversed the wires of the ground throw underneath at the terminal strip and ran the first experiment again, the switcher went through the turnout without a hitch. (Ding, ding, ding! We're on the right track!)
I had to remove the ground throws in order to reverse the wiring. It wasn't until I was unsoldering the wires that I finally understood that I had been looking at how the ground throw operated in reverse. Once both ground throws were corrected, I tried the first experiment again for both the mainline and passing siding. No shorts!
Well, it took me several nights to figure out how I was actually going to wire things, as well as identify where the shorting problems were coming from. The nice thing is that I learned my sophomoric mistakes on the hardest part of the layout. Hopefully, all the other turnout installations should go easier. (Or, at least diagnosing problems should be quicker. )
Super news, Tom.
I either forgot or didn't know that you had purchased assembled FT turnouts. I guess there is a lesson for all of us in this situation...don't expect that they come assembled and wired properly.
Glad you managed to get it sorted out Tom! Sometimes it pays to get another viewpoint or to look away for a while. I guess too that from every frustration we learn something useful. I've sure managed to learn a lot in the past few years
Karl
This was not an FT issue. You can expect them to come assembled and wired properly. These pre-built FT come with a single wire soldered to the frog. You can't go wrong unless you solder the loose end to the wrong pad.
Our friend made the mistake (... or 3 ... ) but he learned from it. That is the good part.
UpNorth wrote:This was not an FT issue. You can expect them to come assembled and wired properly. These pre-built FT come with a single wire soldered to the frog. You can't go wrong unless you solder the loose end to the wrong pad.
And THAT'S exacty what happened. I knew the FT turnout was NOT the problem because the gentleman I bought them from does a very nice job of fabricating and assembling them. I knew the problem somehow had to lie with the "installation engineer". (You just can't get good help these days, can you? )
Even so, Crandell and larak's comments and concerns are valid ones. Even a single overlooked rail spike bridging the two rails can cause havoc and not be obvious. That's why it's important to test your work after each step all along the way.
As you stated, UpNorth, mistakes are good...especially when we learn from them. BTW, didn't Thomas Edison make ~2,000 of them before he came up with a reliable light bulb? Hey, if that's the case, I WAY ahead of game.