Peco settrack wye points

[johna]

Do I need to fit plastic rail joiners between these two wye points please?

 

Johna

[kevinlms]

5 hours ago, johna said:

Do I need to fit plastic rail joiners between these two wye points please?

 

Johna

Almost certainly, but it depends on the rest of your track plan.

[Butler Henderson]

If the diverging tracks are powered by the same controller there normally would be no need for plastic rail joiners as these are dead frog points.

If the diverging tracks are powered by separate controllers and when set to crossover only one of those controllers is in use then again plastic rail joiners will not be neccesssary

[DCB]

Short answer, No. Not with Insulfrog.    If you go streamline and Electrofrog then you need plastic insulated joiners.    Long answer  unless you are using Morley or OnTrack controllers feeding the tracks leading to the Y points you don't need isolators. Morley etc don't have off positions.  

[BR60103]

You will only require insulated joiners if the two points can be powered by different controller. If you have one controller for the whole block or the whole layout it won't be required.

[ejstubbs]

22 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

Morley etc don't have off positions.

 

My Morley controller has a clear detent at its centre off position.  However, it seems to be purely mechanical: my multimeter shows the no-load voltage on the output terminals to be ~0.8V when the knob is in the centre off position.  That's using the pot on the main unit - using the handheld the no-load voltage on the output terminals is over 1V with the knob at the centre off detent.

[john new]

My experience is that if you are ever in doubt as to whether splitting a piece of track into two sections is justified/necessary do it when laying the track. For the short term you can fit jumper wires dropping below the baseboard and back up again to bridge the gaps. That should be easier to cut/split in the future, if an isolated gap is found to be needed after all, rather than trying to retro-cut the laid track. 

[DCB]

17 minutes ago, ejstubbs said:

 

My Morley controller has a clear detent at its centre off position.  However, it seems to be purely mechanical: my multimeter shows the no-load voltage on the output terminals to be ~0.8V when the knob is in the centre off position.  That's using the pot on the main unit - using the handheld the no-load voltage on the output terminals is over 1V with the knob at the centre off detent.

Most controller have a dead spot at the end or centre of the control knob travel so the transformer windings are isolated from the outputs. Morley ( and OnTrack) is different, while There is a click at centre of the pot it does not disconnect the outputs from the transformer and that causes problems if two Moleys or one Morley and another controller are  connected to the same rail. With every other controller I know of switching the knob to "Off" isolates the transformer from the rails, with a Morley it remains connected.

[AndyID]

On 08/09/2019 at 13:52, DavidCBroad said:

Most controller have a dead spot at the end or centre of the control knob travel so the transformer windings are isolated from the outputs. Morley ( and OnTrack) is different, while There is a click at centre of the pot it does not disconnect the outputs from the transformer and that causes problems if two Moleys or one Morley and another controller are  connected to the same rail. With every other controller I know of switching the knob to "Off" isolates the transformer from the rails, with a Morley it remains connected.

 

I don't think the OP said anything about two controllers. Hopefully we have not confused the OP too much.

 

Morely controllers are designed to work on common-return layouts. That means their output terminals are "floating" just as if they were being driven by a controllable voltage battery. The terminals are not referenced to earth, mains or anything else. They are only referenced to each other, just like the terminals on a battery.

 

If you connect two controllers (Morley or anything else) back-to-back you might well run into problems (just as you might if you connected two batteries back-to-back). Relying on a controller to isolate its output terminals when it's "off" is just not a good idea. That's one of the many reasons Cab Control was invented at least 70 years ago.

 

PECO used to put out a little pamphlet on the subject. It I made things very clear.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2019 by AndyID
Errant punctuation