Guidance on wiring my diamond

[young37215]

Hi

 

My model of Crianlarich includes the old diamond crossing at the northern end of the station where the Oban and Fort William lines divide. I attach a picture of this below, I am seeking guidance on wiring the 6 frogs that make up the junction.  Background is:

• Track is Peco code 75 electrofrog points 
• Points will be motorised with servos and a Megapoints Controller
• Each piece of track/point will be independently wired to the BUS
• The diamond has insulating joiners on every rail

I want to make the polarity switching as simple as possible with as few wires as I can whilst minimising the risk of shorts. I think that a frog juicer might be my best solution because, even if I wire the 2 diamond frogs independently (and thus add more wires), there is the risk of manual error with the route setting causing a short. I think I should be able to get a frog juicer to provide polarity control to all 6 frogs with just two power inputs from the BUS and 6 outputs to each point. If correct then this appears to be the optimal solution for what I want to achieve. 

 

My questions:

does what I say make sense?

assuming I have understood correctly, can anyone recommend a frog juicer with 6 or more outputs

 

Thanks for your input

 

Rob

 

   

[Phil Bullock]

Hex frog juicer probably the one to go for....try googling. No doubt others would work too.

 

Kind regards

 

Phil

[Phil Bullock]

Ps have you modified the points to achieve optimal performance? Cut wire links to frog underneath blades and add extra feeds. On Mobile at moment so not easy to describe but there are other threads on here that fulfil that purpose

 

Phil

[chris p bacon]

I have a handmade scissors and I'll try and put my hand on the wiring sketch I made up.

 

Essentially you need to fully isolate the diamond and then wire opposing points as you would a crossover and energise the diamond with a motor activated switch (I'm using Tortoise) The Diamond is then dead when not switched.

 

That's if I've remembered it correctly.....

[Joseph_Pestell]

I have a handmade scissors and I'll try and put my hand on the wiring sketch I made up.

 

Essentially you need to fully isolate the diamond and then wire opposing points as you would a crossover and energise the diamond with a motor activated switch (I'm using Tortoise) The Diamond is then dead when not switched.

 

That's if I've remembered it correctly.....

 

I agree with this approach.

 

Diamonds rarely exist on their own. Consider it as part of a route and it becomes easy to switch polarity of the crossings on the diamond in conjunction with moving the points.

[young37215]

Ps have you modified the points to achieve optimal performance? Cut wire links to frog underneath blades and add extra feeds. On Mobile at moment so not easy to describe but there are other threads on here that fulfil that purpose

 

Phil

Thanks Phil

 

Yes, point performance optimised by cutting the wires. Both point blades are individually powered.  

 

regards Rob

[chris p bacon]

The diamond looks to be using ordinary fishplates which will cause a short.

[Grovenor]

See http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/86612-home-made-scissor-crossing-and-control/&do=findComment&comment=1473593

Regards

[DCB]

Frog juicers have to be the way to go, whether one with six outputs or six individual ones.   I'm guessing this is DCC but wondering if frog juicers work on DC?

 

The problem is authority, which point controls polarity?  You have trains approaching the scissors from Oban and Ft William heading for the up platform and trains leaving the down platform for Fort William and Oban.    No one point has authority.  its not something that can be controlled automatically without a third party input.

Simple answer power the polarity from a servo selected like a point on the control panel.  A point motor with a micro switch possibly powering a relay is ideal  I use diode matrix route setting with solenoid motors which makes setting up a road dead easy.    Is that a dead frog diamond?  My live frog diamonds need 4 pole relays, but they are DC

[chris p bacon]

Frog juicers have to be the way to go, whether one with six outputs or six individual ones.   I'm guessing this is DCC but wondering if frog juicers work on DC?

 

The problem is authority, which point controls polarity?  You have trains approaching the scissors from Oban and Ft William heading for the up platform and trains leaving the down platform for Fort William and Oban.    No one point has authority.  its not something that can be controlled automatically without a third party input.

Simple answer power the polarity from a servo selected like a point on the control panel.  A point motor with a micro switch possibly powering a relay is ideal  I use diode matrix route setting with solenoid motors which makes setting up a road dead easy.    Is that a dead frog diamond?  My live frog diamonds need 4 pole relays, but they are DC

I really disagree with this.

 

I would never spend £70 when it is just 2 simple crossovers which can be wired from a motors accessory switch, Isolate the diamond and only make it live when the crossover is selected.  

[Suzie]

I would be inclined to simply wire the frogs of the four points using the auxiliary switches on the point motors (probably best to get servo motors that can have microswitches added like the Signalist SB1 motor if using the Megapoints), then connect the lower diamond frog to the frog of the point top left, and the upper diamond frog to the frog of the point lower right.

 

When operating always switch both points of a crossover together so top left and bottom right together, and top right and bottom left together. Just make sure that when using the diamond only one set of points is set for the crossover and all will be well. A bit of interlocking of the point controls might help like using a 3-way switch to select the three possible routes.

[66C]

Hi Rob

 

Have a look at:

 

http://www.gaugemaster.com/item_details.asp?code=BPDCC80&style=main&strType=&Mcode=Gaugemaster+BPDCC80

 

Regards.

[Phil Bullock]

Frog juicers don't work on DC ....

 

And the OP specifically asked about frog juicers....which are expensive but Rolls Royce solutions don't come cheap.....

 

Cheers

 

Phil

[young37215]

Dear all

 

Thanks for your input. To clarify a couple of points raised, the diamond is electrofrog and has an isolating joiner on every rail. The layout is DCC controlled. I intend constructing a mimic control panel with switches to operate the servos for the points (and the semaphore signals) 

 

I get the option of micro switches operated by the point motor servos for the point frogs. I am less certain about the diamond. Is it as straightforward as Susie suggests? If it is then using point micro switches gives me a solution, albeit one that relies on me setting the points to the correct sequence to avoid shorts. I could live with that and it will be much cheaper than the frog juicer; its just that I am not confident that it is this straightforward.  

 

Rob

[Enterprisingwestern]

Dear all

 

Thanks for your input. To clarify a couple of points raised, the diamond is electrofrog and has an isolating joiner on every rail. The layout is DCC controlled. I intend constructing a mimic control panel with switches to operate the servos for the points (and the semaphore signals) 

 

I get the option of micro switches operated by the point motor servos for the point frogs. I am less certain about the diamond. Is it as straightforward as Susie suggests? If it is then using point micro switches gives me a solution, albeit one that relies on me setting the points to the correct sequence to avoid shorts. I could live with that and it will be much cheaper than the frog juicer; its just that I am not confident that it is this straightforward.  

 

Rob

 

Whilst you are powering any combination of 6 frogs, you are only setting 2 routes through the diamond, try thinking of it simplistically.

 

Mike.

[Grovenor]

 

I get the option of micro switches operated by the point motor servos for the point frogs. I am less certain about the diamond. Is it as straightforward as Susie suggests?

Yes it is straightforward, look at the link I gave in post #8 where it is all drawn out (so long as you ignore all the other confusing suggestions. There's a better topic somewhere, it comes up quite often, but I couldn't find it.

Regards

[jpendle]

As others have said, interlocking using a 3 way switch for route setting would solve the problem.

If you decide to use frig juicers then you only need two, not 6.

Fully isolate the diamond and then put two frog juicers on the two frogs of the diamond.

I have done this on all the crossovers on my layout and it works fine.

 

Regards,

 

John P

[DCB]

I really disagree with this.

 

I would never spend £70 when it is just 2 simple crossovers which can be wired from a motors accessory switch, Isolate the diamond and only make it live when the crossover is selected.  

Its not quite that simple, You can do it with two accessory switches if the frogs are live at all times,  If you want to isolate the Frogs when the road is not set you will need four accessory switches one on each point and there will be a dead short if both crossover routes are set at the same time.

I think the simplest system using accessory switches looks to be if the points forming the "Crossover" from down line to Ft William line each have accessory switches reversing the polarity of the adjacent frogs which are always live then it should work. 

 

Edit.  The above is for DCC with the type of Live Frog dead Knuckle (?) diamond shown and only works if all the track is in one Power Area.   DC would be a lot more complicated if you wanted to run simultaneous Ft William arrivals and Oban departures.

Edited May 26, 2017 by DavidCBroad

[young37215]

Progress report

 

Taking on board peoples counsel I will attempt the use of switches to power the frogs of both points and diamond. As has been pointed out for electrical continuity I will consider routes using the crossover rather than individual points. As the above schematic shows, there are essentially 4 routes using the crossover of which only two traverse the diamond.  Should be simple!

 

Action to date

BUS wires soldered to each point, the diamond and the two small pieces of track that make up the crossover which have all been connected to the BUS. Holes for the frog wires have been drilled through the baseboard and the wires now protrude to the under side of the board although frogs are not yet connected to any power. The track has been placed in situ and trains run across in all directions. No shorts evident although, given the frogs are not connected, there are a couple of points where the dead sections are virtually the length of the loco wheel base which cause momentary interruptions in power. Usually momentum carries the loco forward to the live rail although slow speed running stalls.

 

Next steps

Attach servos to the points. I am waiting for micro switches to arrive to power the frogs to do this as one task.

 

Summary

So far I am encouraged by progress. Thanks to everyone for their counsel. I will report again once I have connected up the frogs to the BUS and installed the servo point motors.   

Edited May 26, 2017 by young37215

[Suzie]

Its not quite that simple, You can do it with two accessory switches if the frogs are live at all times,  If you want to isolate the Frogs when the road is not set you will need four accessory switches one on each point and there will be a dead short if both crossover routes are set at the same time.

I think the simplest system using accessory switches looks to be if the points forming the "Crossover" from down line to Ft William line each have accessory switches reversing the polarity of the adjacent frogs which are always live then it should work. 

This is what you get with my method described above.

[richard.h]

I have a similar setup and wired it up using the secondary switches on my Tortoise Point motors.

With the lines set to run straight through it doesn't matter what the polarity of a fully isolated crossing is.

If you treat it as a route setting then if you say cross from top to bottom you use the spare switch on the appropriate point motor to set the crossing to the correct polarity for that route.

When you reset the route to straight through the point motor reverses the polarity so that it is ready for the route bottom to top when selected.

As you are never going to set a route where both crossings are activated at once there shouldn't be a conflict.

 

As others have said you can also use a dual frog juicer just to feed the crossing if required the last one I bought was around £28.00 so its not an expensive solution.

[DCB]

I have a similar setup and wired it up using the secondary switches on my Tortoise Point motors.

With the lines set to run straight through it doesn't matter what the polarity of a fully isolated crossing is.

If you treat it as a route setting then if you say cross from top to bottom you use the spare switch on the appropriate point motor to set the crossing to the correct polarity for that route.

When you reset the route to straight through the point motor reverses the polarity so that it is ready for the route bottom to top when selected.

As you are never going to set a route where both crossings are activated at once there shouldn't be a conflict.

 

As others have said you can also use a dual frog juicer just to feed the crossing if required the last one I bought was around £28.00 so its not an expensive solution.

 

The OP said about the danger of incorrect route setting,  With your set up if the route was set for an Oban arrival and then set up for a Ft William departure there would be a dead short, This is a junction not a scissors crossover, different ball game.  Suzi's set up or mine, which is essentially the same but specifies accessory switches, is essentially idiot proof and wont short out without running a train across it

[young37215]

The asylum beckons!

 

The servos change the points perfectly and open/close the microswitch. My problem lies with shorts which I simply cannot crack despite having spent countless hours in the last month wiring up, testing, shorting, checking and re-wiring and testing again. I am at my wits end; all counsel whether psychiatric or electrical will be gratefully received.

 

To clarify what I have done so far:

 

Each point has its own power supply from the BUS

I broke the frog power connections on each of the 4 points in line with Peco guidance.

 

Diamond wired up with power (I use orange and yellow wires for power because I can see the difference) and all joins insulated.

 

Diamond frog wiring, green wires from microswitches are attached to point frogs and diamond frogs in line with peoples guidance in this thread  

 

Microswitch, 5amp, appears bog standard. 3 wiring points, C (common) goes to frog, NO (normally open) is the middle connection and the default setting, if the switch is open as it is in the picture then this is the power source. NC (normally closed) is the power source when the switch is closed.

 

Servo with micro switch. In this picture the microswitch is open so frog power comes from the middle (the yellow) wire

[young37215]

It appears that I may have my microswitches incorrectly wired. Please may I ask for comment on the above 2 pictures, particularly the last one. Want I want to know is given the present setting of the switch in the last picture, which of the orange or green wires will be powering to the common?  

 

Thanks in advance

[smokebox]

Which terminal is marked as NC (normally closed)? That's the one that will be feeding the frog because the switch is in it's normal position IE unoperated.

Edited July 6, 2017 by smokebox