Peco Diamond Crossover - Insulfrog

[drewn]

Guys,

 

Still having problems with peco crossings. Not short circuits, as I thought, but at the centre of the crossing there is a space of approximately 20mm where the loco wheels cease to make contact with the rails and instead, run on the plastic inserts.

 

Obviously, causing an open circuit. 

 

Only the momentum of the loco helps it to traverse this area but a slow moving loco just stops.

 

With sound fitted locos, the sound obviously shuts down for a second or so.

 

I do not want to fit electrofrogs if I can help it, but surely this is a serious design flaw????

 

Any cures in mind?

 

Drew

[drewn]

Guys,

 

Still having problems with peco crossings. Not short circuits, as I thought, but at the centre of the crossing there is a space of approximately 20mm where the loco wheels cease to make contact with the rails and instead, run on the plastic inserts.

 

Obviously, causing an open circuit. 

 

Only the momentum of the loco helps it to traverse this area but a slow moving loco just stops.

 

With sound fitted locos, the sound obviously shuts down for a second or so.

 

I do not want to fit electrofrogs if I can help it, but surely this is a serious design flaw????

 

Any cures in mind?

 

Drew

 

Just had an afterthought, I have NOT yet checked that ALL pickups are working !

 

Obviously, if they  are, that should overcome the fact that other wheels are not in contact with the rails.

 

Must check that out next

 

Drew

[Bernard Lamb]

Run the trains a bit faster.

Fit pick ups to all wheels.

Check all existing pick ups are actually working and that all parts that carry electricity are clean.

Only use locomotives that have a suitable wheelbase.

Read the many thousands of posts in various topics on track and how to supply power to it. Start with the current two topics under the Peco banner.

Or take up a less complicated and historically confused hobby.

Bernard

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

...I do not want to fit electrofrogs if I can help it, but surely this is a serious design flaw???? Any cures in mind?

DCC was years away when this item was designed is probably the truth of it. Most contemporary RTR mechanisms weren't competent to run slowly either at the time, so 'crash through rather fast' was the solution.

 

Ameliorations

Leave the track as is, improve pick up so the loco can always span the dead spots with pick up wheels on rails at all times.

Fit a hefty 'stay alive' to the decoders.

 

Cure.

Build switched crossing diamond crossing replacements. (RTR diamonds are likely to be dead crossing types, because there is no mechanism to provide the switching for live crossings.)

[Il Grifone]

The design flaw is in using dead crossings.  (Sorry!)

 

Any interruption in the current flow is going to cause problems. The assumption is that the track is dead level and the chassis is square and all the pickups (ideally on every wheel, though most models rely on only four) are all functioning. Normally this works, but it takes very little to cause a stall.

 

In the distant past I converted a Tri-ang 'Jinty' chassis to scale. As long as the wheels were clean she ran beautifully over plastic crossings (Formoway - shows how long ago), but as soon as the wheels picked up any muck, stalling was almost guaranteed. 

 

Analogue or digital supply makes no difference, but at least you can fit a 'stay alive' with DCC. (The analogue equivalent - a flywheel - is less than 100% succesfull.)

[Theakerr]

From your description I suspect you are using code 100.  Try code 75 instead.  Basically my layout uses code 100 but the code 75 interfaces well.  I no longer have a shorting issue  and with todays wheels I no longer get derailments.  As someone said the code 100, especially the really old code 100, was designed to let anything through

[Butler Henderson]

Pecos Code 100 points and crossings have been modified over the years and now are pretty tight on clearance although Code 75 certainly is neater. The simplest solution IMO would be change the crossing for a live frog Code 75 one with a couple of Gaugemaster DCC80s to take care of polarity issues.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Butler Henderson

[Roy Langridge]

Pecos Code 100 points and crossings have been modified over the years and now are pretty tight on clearance although Code 75 certainly is neater. The simplest solution IMO would be change the crossing for a live frog Code 75 one with a couple of Gaugemaster DCC80s to take care of polarity issues.

The layout I built for my sons has code 100 peco track and the crossing has been a real pain. For example, even A new spec Bachmann Class 40 shorts the DCC at slow speed.

 

Roy

[Butler Henderson]

Had that problem with a Medium LH and a Hornby T9 - ended up modifying it as best I could in situ so that it was wired up as a live frog. The tighter clearances on Code 100 do mean that the chances of shorts on DCC are more likely and consequently its best to use live frogs. I am about to rip the Medium LH up and replace it (and its colleague on a crossover) with live frogs albeit still Code 100.

[Theakerr]

Whilst I realise that the code 100 has been refined over the years, my problems, cured by going code 75 (insul frog), were there on the upgraded code 100 crossovers

[Silver Sidelines]

Hello Drew

 

I wanted to keep with Code 100 and the solution I adopted was to swap out the diamond for a single slip.  This was still insulfrog but the only insulated bits are the 'Vs' at either end  - not the large chunk of plastic in the middle.   Prior to ridding myself of the simple diamond I had some success in nailing down the centre of the crossing - my example seemed to be bowed up in the middle which encouraged everything to pause and have a little rest whilst using the crossing.  With the single slip everything runs smoothly and as slowly as required.  (Don't actually try using the single slip - the right angle turn seems suited only for toy train sets!)

 

Ray

Edited October 18, 2017 by Silver Sidelines

[drewn]

Here' s an update on what I've found!

 

1. It was a SHORTING problem, not an OPEN CIRCUIT problem.

2. I proved this by applying insulating tape over the complete middle section of the diamond, the loco traversed it without stopping.

3.I ended up applying nail varnish to that area and left to dry.

 

The loco now travels over the crossing with only a slight hesitation, no shorting apparently.

 

This fix works perfectly for my two sound chipped CO- cO locos, but only 90% successful on my  Bo-Bo loco.

 

The hesitation I can live with as the crossing is situated behind a backscene and so out of sight.

 

So basically, I'm going to leave it as it now stands, rather than replace track, etc.

 

Thanks to everyone for their help

 

Drew

[Theakerr]

Ray,

I like you plan to keep my code 100 (too much time and money invested) but for both diamond crossings and slips I have found the the code 75 with the proper fishplates and, most important, the proper height adjustment insert (10 1/1000 if I remember correctly), give far more reliable running than the code 100 and I can use the single slip as designed.

[Stevelewis]

Re  using  Nail varnish  to insulate,  Another   very  useful  product  is  Germolene  NEW SKIN,  works  a  treat  and  last   a little longet  in  situ  than  Nail varnish.

 

For  info  New  Skin  was  part  of  my multiproduct  portfolio I  was  responsible  for  when  I did  a 'proper'  job!  I used  to  use  it  on my  Garden  Line  to  insulate  the V  of Peco  G scale  points to prevent  digital  short  circuiting .

[MartynJPearson]

I had similar issues, and had success by radically changing the wiring for the diamond. I had the advantage though that the diamond was not in a scenic area so I could get away with wires and soldering being visible, but it should still be doable discretely with a little care.

 

Referring to this image from dccwiki, I did the following

 

 

Bond the two uppermost rails together (red and magenta), bridging the isolator between them.

Bond the two lowermost rails together (blue and green), bridging the isolator between them.

Cut the feeds to the frogs and electrically bond the two rails forming the outer V's. 

Cut the four central tracks that form a diamond (red, magenta, blue and green) in the centre. (Careful not to break the rail off the rail chairs, this was the hardest part)

Bond the four central track ends to their adjacent frogs.

Feed the frogs according to the direction of points feeding into the diamond.

Insulating rail joiners were then used at the ends where it joins the next section of track, in the same way as an electrofrog point.

 

This wasn't as hard as it sounds and now all my stock runs perfectly over them. 

[Butler Henderson]

I have a dead frog crossing in the new fiddle yard and yet to test it fully. As the neighbouring track is Code 83 I used a Code 83 one that I already had - think its an Atlas crossing and was looking at it the other day thinking the Peco dead frog Code 100 that is now also spare (having replaced that on the scenic section with a live frog Code 75) would look neater, but as the Atlas has bigger dead areas it probably will be okay on DCC. If it plays up I think it will get exchanged for a Code 75 one. The easiest way to cope with a live frog crossing on DCC is to fit a pair of Gaugemaster DCC80 modules. I have eight in use and they seem pretty foolproof as as I had mistakenly originally wired one up to a rail of a Marcway custom made double crossing which did not require power switching and was fully powered up and two more are fitted to a scratchbuilt crossing made from two pieces of Roco code 83 track with a copper clad centre - I managed to miss making one of the necessary cuts in the copper clad. I was expecting to find I had blown up one or more of the DCC80s but all are working okay with the connection corrected and the copper clad properly cut.

Edited October 20, 2017 by Butler Henderson