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DCC Fridays Ep. #8 - N Scale Point Wiring for DCC (Peco turnouts, electro and insul)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ม.ค. 2021
- A fairly in depth look at the wiring required to setup N scale points for DCC operation. I cover the differences between electrofrog and insulfrog points and how both kinds should be wired up correctly for DCC operation.
If you’d like to know more about what I covered in this episode or would like me to cover something else, let me know in the comments below or get in touch with me via email: bmodeltrains@gmail.com
www.bmodeltrains.com
Thankyou jarryd it's like scuba diving you need the course before you get in the water .
Thank you! Exactly right
Jarryd many thanks for the video and well done, they not only do they take a lot of time to film, edit and publish but also a great deal of courage to face the media so to speak. You are correct, details on N Scale are few and far between.
My only gap remaining is physically seeing the Tortoise motor wired up. From what you have shown your Frog wire leading to the Tortoise would be joined to either "common" terminal (being 4 or 5 on the motor). Your Motor obviously needs power (either through a switch or circuit board) joined to terminal 1 and 8. What I couldn't figure watching this is how are you changing polarity without having wires dropping down or joining either terminals 2 & 3 or 6&7. I am still a little confused on this one.
Hi Mark,
Thank you, much appreciated!
The frog wire is connected to terminal 4 on the tortoise motor, and track + & - is connected to terminals 2 & 3 directly from the DCC bus that supplies the track. This way the physical connections on the point is limited to the two most outside rails, receiving track + & - from the DCC bus, and the frog, receiving track + & - dependent on the position of the point, determined by the polarity switch on the tortoise motor in this case.
To further clarify, the switchable track + or - connection powers the frog, closure rails and essentially all inside rails of the point.
Jarryd, many thanks for following up on this, its like I have found the missing link. Five Stars and a thumbs up.
@@markfrench5145 Thank you! Glad you've got it sorted :)
Thank you jarryd great advice. Could I ask a slightly off topic question? I am new to N (was HO) - what thickness ply baseboard do you and your club use?
We have typically used about 12mm ply, some sections I think we went to 9mm but found that a little thin. Depends on how you construct the frame underneath the boards! I myself have built my layout on Bunnings Knauf foam board, and have that sitting on top of a simple wooden frame.
@@buckamboolmodeltrains Thank you Jarryd
A question about Peco turnouts and DCC. Everyone says you need to modify them if you're going to power your frogs, basically to isolate the frogs and to give more reliable power to the points them selves. The modifications make sense to me. But what could also make sense to me, given what I know about how power works, is it simply keep them as-is and simply use insulated joiners at the inner 2 rails of the turnout. Then just solder a feed to the thin wire the guides say to break and hook that up to your polarity switch. Would this not essentially "juice" the entire frogs and points the correct polarity all the way through? Turnout motors like walther's or tortoises remain power-dead while the points move, so there'd be no risk of a short while operating the point. Is the risk that during a derailment a wheel could touch the wrong point rail and short out?
For Peco N scale electro-frog turnouts you are absolutely right. If you solder a 'feed' to any of the inside rails or frog itself of the point, this will 'juice' the entire frog and point. You will still need to put a red and black dropper wire onto the outside rails of the point, or provide power to these outside rails via rail joiners, etc.
And yes you're also correct in saying that there is the risk of a short if a locomotive/car derails and touches the inner rail. Typically I find that the derailment is the more problematic issue, a short at the same time can be managed through well planned out power districts...
Thanks for some great comments!
I've never done power districts before, just the whole layout running on a few feeds going direct to my DCC system. The few times a train would derail bad enough to cause a short, the DCC system's own short protection would very quickly pick this up and shut down the system. But one time I had a loco derail on a peco curved turnout and the system didn't shut down, fried my decoder...
Would power districts some how have helped with that? I understand power districts were big in DC days so you could have multiple trains running on the same layout, but I'm not 100% sure on their use on a DCC layout. Is it more for short detection and general troubleshooting of the layout?
@@baronjutter Yes this works well for most people, and 9 times out of 10 is fool-proof for the lifespan of a layout. I work off the principle of a dropper wire for every single piece of track, no matter how big or small! From my experience with the Digitrax PM42, a device that takes the output from your DCC system and splits it into 4 power districts, this issue shouldn't occur, provided there are a substantial number of dropper wires around the layout. The PM42 detects short circuits and cuts the power only for the district that has the short. Over a larger layout, or layout with minimal dropper wires, this would likely detect short circuits better than the command station running the whole lot on it's own.
There are other DCC power management devices made by other manufacturers also.
The main advantage of districts is to break up large layouts running lots of locomotives, and to manage short circuits much better.... if someone shorts out in the staging yard the whole layout doesn't go down... that sort of thing!