Do you have any other turnouts you could test the tester on? How about just hand-sliding an engine over the turnout, DCC power on but the engine itself stopped? You should get a short if the frog polarity is wrong. On DC you can just run the engine slowly, or use a track-powered illuminated passenger car.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Randy,
-The polarity tester checks out perfectly.
-Disconnected green wire on terminal 4 and connected the probe, the LED's on the tester shift from red to green and back again when throwing the panel switch, check.
-My turnouts is wired exactly after the drawing, and i know i cut a lot of jumper on switches, but, it could have been a poorly made cut on this one... make sense.I dont want to rip apart everything, so i think i drill a small hole from under and have a look. What rail would be the problem, the one that have a green LED connected all the time?
-Yes, i have isulated joiners at both rails from the frog, check.
Unfortunately i'm not a good electric... guy, it's hard for me to come up with those question you had, and i'm very thankfull for that!
Regards,Pete
First of all, does the tester work correctly, just on a plain piece of track? Hook the red to one rail, green to the other, and then you should get the red LED when the probe touches one rail and the green LED when the probe touches the other rail. Once you are sure that is all wired correctly, then you can proceed to use it to test the frog.
Next, try disconnecting the wire from the frog. Keep the rails connected to 2 and 3, and also connect the tester red and green to the same rails that feed pins 2 and 3 (given the numbers, I assume you are using Tortoise switch motors). Connect the probe to pin 4. The red and green LED should change with the position of the switch motor. I'm not even sure how it couldn't. You're not simply using the contacts in the Tortoise to do what you did manually to validate the tester is working correctly.
If that works - are you certain the turnout is wired exactly like the diagram, that the factory jumpers are cut? Because if the common terminal (4) from the Tortoise is flipping between rail a and rail b, the connecting that wire to the frog has to do the same.
Do you have isulated joiners on the two rails that diverge from the frog? As shown on the turnout wiring diagram - these are critical and you'll have s short if not.
--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 guys,
I'm checking that i have connected the cables correctly to the Tortoise motor and Peco turnouts, but i do not get the frog to change polarity. I have built this tester: : https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/17215 .When i use the polarity tester the green LED always lights up when i check the frog, regardless of the turnout direction.
I have wired the Peco this way: https://dccwiki.com/File:TurnoutModifiedElectrofrog.gif
I have shifted cables 2-3 on the motor, no change.
And i have moved cabled to the internal switch no.2 on the motor, no change.
I use an NCE Power Cab.
I starting to feel a little fried... but maybe it's the motor-switches that are fried?
Hope for some input,Thanks,
Pete