Straight to the point

[Leon]

Hi guys, after some advice before I put a hammer to my layout, My layourt is South Wales Freight for those who have not seen it, I have a round 14 points on the layout, they are all electrafrog and the layout is DCC. There is no direct power to the points, just the blades which I have now realised to be a mistake as the sligest bit of dirt stalls the 09 shunter.

 

Anyway, tonight I decided to tackle the problem points once and for all, cleaned, cleaned and cleaned them but one would not preform and kept stopping the Gronk, In my anger I bent one of the blades trying to get a better connection with the outer rail, mistake, the whole point is now completly dead, powerless. I have even forced the blade into the side rail to get good connectivity but still no joy so I think I have some how terminally damed the point which may well now have to be lifted and replaced. To add to the insult its the point that leads to the yard and more points so the whole layout is non operational.

 

I can add a pic of the point in situ if that explanes better, hope someone knows or has come across this before, thanks in advance

 

Leon

[brossard]

From your description, Leon, it sounds like you haven't made the points DCC ready. Even on DC, the idea of trying to get reliable running from blade contacting the stock rail is not viable.

 

My advice is to convert the points to DCC as follows:

 

http://www.brian-lambert.co.uk/DCC.htm

 

I haven't seen your layout but if the track is ballasted and fixed, you don't need to lift points. You will need to clean off paint and grunge from a small area of the stock rails and closure rails in order to solder droppers. Similarly, you need to add a dropper to the crossing. To remove the jumper between the closure rail and wing rail you need to use a pin vice with a smallish bit to make a hole at the plastic insulated gap. Poking around with a small screwdriver you should find the jumper which needs to be pushed out. Ensure it's bent back so it doesn't make contact again. Fill the hole with with epoxy if you want.

 

For the broken point, that probably has to be lifted. You can replace with new or repair. Lifting the point usually causes further damage. It can be recycled and I talk about that here:

 

http://bmrcm.org/re-using-lifted-rtr-points

 

You don't mention point motors. My preference is for slo-mo types such as Tortoise. In any event you need some way to switch crossing (frog) polarity depending on the route from the point.

 

John