rue_d_etropal

I am a fan of insulfrog(dead) frog points, because wiring is a lot simpler. Peco points are even better than they were when electrofrogs were introduced over 40 years ago. Motors are also much better, so slow running is much better.

There is one improvement I make to my points and that is to connect wires between diverting tracks so not dependent on power going though tips of point blades. That usually fixes one of the main problems. Keeping track clean is important, and as long as you don't want to run heavy trains then applying some graphite to top of rails ill keep the muck away. Especially useful in difficult to reach locations.

One thing I would like to see is some proper thorough testing to compare insulfrog and electrofrog points, as it tends to be a case of different people favouring each, for what might be spurious reasons.

I had thought about starting a thread on forum, with title 'Dead or (a)live?'.

Thing is that , in theory, as long as one wheel on each rail is in contact with a powered rail, then the loco should continue to move, so any problem will be caused by something else, eg dirty track, or unevenness (which might be the top surface of the plastic on a dead frog being slightly higher than the metal rail).

As I said, this really needs to be properly investigated, as I have come across too many problems caused by over-complicating things, especially when live frogs are used.

Just found this blog from Kevin. I was the chap next door at Apedale. Thanks for taking photo, Kevin, it looked good in my local newspaper.

My range of WW1 locos and stock, as originally designed for my own 1/35th scale project, which was also at Apedale. After repeated requests for other scales, I started with the 1/43 versions. The locos were relatively easy, but probably require more work to fit on chassis. The wagons, well the chassis required a lot of modification to the designs, to stretch to 16.5mm gauge. There as also a lot of redesigning to fit(just) 14mm gauge. One reason the wagons have not been resized to OO9!