Peco electrofrog points

[David Pell]

Afternoon all, I’d like to ask the collective about some new Peco streamline SL-E97 small radius Y turnouts I’ve recently bought. I’ve posted 2 photographs of them to help. They were packaged as electrofrog turnouts, however they look different to previous electrofrogs I’ve bought. Are they electrofrog or insulated? If they’re electrofrog where are the 2 wires that should be cut on the switch blades, they don’t have the long frog wire as previous and the 2 switch blades leading to the frog pass a current to the frog via the small contact beneath the blades. Your views/help would be most appreciated. 

[jpendle]

They look like Unifrog points to me.

 

John P

[Dagworth]

The small Y point is too short to have the link wires and insulation gaps of the rest of the electrofrog range.  As a result of the lack of insulation gaps there is no need for the normal frog wire either.  The point you have posted is very much an electro frog point though. 
 

Andi

Edited December 17, 2020 by Dagworth

[Harlequin]

They are electrofrog, as Andi says, it's just that some Peco Streamline turnouts have an older design than others. I think the Small Ys are an example of this (and there are physical reasons why these small turnouts need to be a bit different as Andi says).

 

If you cut both long link wires then you will isolate the frog from the closure rails and the closure rails from each other. Cut one of the link wires as far away from the frog as possible and that becomes the frog dropper wire.

 

Then solder new link wires to the underside of the closure rails. You can see there are openings in the moulding where the closure rails are visible and channels in the "sleeper" to route wires to the outside of the turnout but nothing to allow you connect them to the stock rails so either bit of carving will be needed or just route those wires through the baseboard as you would any normal power feed dropper.

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Harlequin

[DCB]

Its Electrofrog though there are some very similar Insulfrog ones which look identical from on top. 

The point blade tag looks to be bent it should make contact under the running rail, see my arrow.  Some lack these tags and are a waste of space.
 I don't see anything to be gained from snipping wires on these points, the check rails which are live to the point blades on longer points are insulated on these points so they can't short with too tight back to back settings on wheel sets and there is bags of clearance between point blades and adjacent rails when the points are "Open"   

I  use them absolutely standard, just solder a dropper to the frog and double up the frog switching with a microswitch if using the point in the garden or if using DCC.   Usual DCC bodgers snip the frog wires and then have lousy running because the point blade doesn't make proper contact at rail end or at pivot end ( see pic ) so they then need extra pick ups and wagons permanently wired to small shunters.  if you must snip wires make sure there is a feed to the moving point blade which doesn't rely on the blade to stock rail or the blade pivot contact.   Test it with a loco with pick ups on only one axle. It shouldn't stall anywhere.  Mine doesn't.  (Except on long crossings)

 

[Tony Cane]

5 minutes ago, DavidCBroad said:

, the check rails which are live to the point blades on longer points are insulated on these points

The photograph in the original post shows, I think, that the parts you indicate as insulated are in fact bonded to the V of the point.

[Pete the Elaner]

6 hours ago, jpendle said:

They look like Unifrog points to me.

 

John P

 

This is a close up of a Unifrog.

The unifrog itself is circled in red & the important electrical breaks are circled in blue. The OP's point does not have the electrical breaks here.

 

[Gilbert]

I should contact their technical  advice people and ask. They should know the right answer...

 

https://peco-uk.com/pages/help-advice

 

info@peco.co

 

Chris

[Free At Last]

16 minutes ago, Gilbert said:

I should contact their technical  advice people and ask. They should know the right answer...

 

 

Chris

... as you don't want to be taking notice of folk on the internet.

[David Pell]

Thanks one and all for all the views and advice; given that I’ve bought the points from 2 retailers I'm of the opinion that they are electrofrog. However, as recommended by Gilbert I’ve contacted Peco and posed the question to them. I’ll update this post with their reply. Once again thanks for all your views. 

[David Pell]

Reply received from Andrew Beard Peco, Technical Advice Bureau. Reply is as follows “The small Y turnout does not have any wires to be cut, as this is to the previous Electrofrog design. For DCC use all that would be required is insulated rail joiners on both frog rails. No alterations are required to the turnout”. 

 

Many thanks

[cravensdmufan]

Hi, I purchased two small Y Electrofrog turnouts just recently.

 

Despite Peco's advice I still modified them; cut and bonded the rails and soldered a wire to the frog and used a microswitch to change polarity.  Used a piercing saw to cut the rails as there's not much space.  Also cut plastic webbing away under the rails to solder the bonding wires.  A bit of extra work, but in ensures perfect running - you are not relying on the point blade contact to transfer the current.

 

I attach a photo - unfortunately I don't know how to insert arrows to point to where I made the cuts and joins!

 

  

[Harlequin]

38 minutes ago, David Pell said:

Reply received from Andrew Beard Peco, Technical Advice Bureau. Reply is as follows “The small Y turnout does not have any wires to be cut, as this is to the previous Electrofrog design. For DCC use all that would be required is insulated rail joiners on both frog rails. No alterations are required to the turnout”. 

 

Many thanks

 

Well, yes and no...

 

You don't have to make any changes to the turnout, but if you have been carrying out the "standard mods" to your other electrofrog turnouts, which your OP implied, then what I said above is the equivalent mod for this type of turnout. (I.e. make the closure rails permanently powered rather than relying on the contact of the blade on the stock rail and switch the frog using a more reliable external switch.)

 

(Note that because the moulded insulating parts are so close to the frog you could have the same problem with some wheelsets as has been found with the Unifrog turnouts but it's easy to fix with a bit of nail varnish painted inside the closure rails.)

 

[Pete the Elaner]

Peco's reply contradicts their products: If there was no advantage to cutting the link rails below & feeding the blades directly, why did they bother designing this in the other points in their range?

I guess they wanted to keep it simple rather than give a fuller explanation.

[cravensdmufan]

I thought it was strange that Peco hadn't provided the wires "for snipping" nor the wire from the frog.  I purchased 12 different Electrofrog turnouts recently and the small Ys were the only ones without the option for modification.

 

Yet I have modified them myself successfully and all my locos* perform faultlessly over them.  So I wonder why Peco chose not to make them the same?  There must be a very good reason.

 

Edit:  Thinking about it further, and looking at my own photo above, it may well be that it's because the only place that you can have the gap in the rail is on a small section which leaves just one plastic chair to hold it in place.  But that doesn't matter on my modification as I have used a piece of non flexible nickel silver rod to bond the rails which has the advantage on giving extra support.  I would just say that the use of that rod was  more luck than design! 

 

* I keep as special loco purely for testing testing turnouts and track in general.  It is an ancient Bachmann Class 03, one with a split chassis, rough wheels without any spring or sideplay, and I have hard wired it for DCC.  If this loco goes over pointwork on speed step 1 then anything will!  And it was fine over my modified small Y electrofrogs! 

Edited December 18, 2020 by cravensdmufan
Additional information

[Alcanman]

I think the reason Peco didn't modlfy 

25 minutes ago, cravensdmufan said:

I thought it was strange that Peco hadn't provided the wires "for snipping" nor the wire from the frog.  I purchased 12 different Electrofrog turnouts recently and the small Ys were the only ones without the option for modification.

 

Yet I have modified them myself successfully and all my locos* perform faultlessly over them.  So I wonder why Peco chose not to make them the same?  There must be a very good reason.

 

 

I think the reason maybe that Peco Y points sell in relatively small numbers compared to other types of point and it simply wasn't worth the cost of re-tooling Y points. This has been discussed before and this was the conclusion some people came to.