Bonding dead frog switchblades in situ

[rodshaw]

I've never had a problem running engines over dead frogs. This is probably because I don't have any 0-4-0 engines. Certainly, all the bogie diesels I have, and my 0-6-0s, run faultlessly over them, even at a crawl.

 

My points being Peco, I have had the occasional problem (and it is very occasional) with loss of electrical contact where the switchblade touches the stock rail. I know much has been written about this, and although the problem is usually remedied with a quick clean, I started to wish I'd bonded them before laying the track.

 

As I'm about to take my layout to its first exhibition, and everything that can go wrong probably will, I thought I'd better try and do something about it. I found that with care, I was able to do the job without lifting the points, using a few twisted strands from a piece of household cable. Here's a brutal close-up of one of the joints:

 

 

In all I did five points. The wires started off longer and were then trimmed after soldering. After tidying up and painting over, the joints are hardly visible.

 

The modification has meant that all of my sections of track which have the points set against them are now live. But as only one engine is in use at any one time, I didn't need to install any isolating or switching mechanisms to stop engines running on these sections.

 

Note: you can't bond live frog switchblades in the same way without extra work underneath to separate them electrically from each other, otherwise you'll get a short circuit. Peco dead frog switchblades are not electrically connected to each other, which for my purposes was very convenient.

 

An ultra-cautious approach would have been to also bond across the gap where the switchblade swivels, but electrical contact seems ok here. (Until that exhibition, probably).

[Crosland]

Nice job!

 

Andrew

[michaelp]

Very neat work.