Atlas Crossovers

Insulated rail joiners on the center rails of whichever sides of the crossover you don’t want powered. The diamond connects all 4 legs.  

This is not a double crossover with Switches.  This is just a cross over.  I have two.  One is 22.5 degree and one is a 90 degree.  One independent loop crosses the other.  If I insulate the crossover, it will be dead, unless I solder a separate pair of wires to it and power it separately from on independent source.  What is happening is the power from one loop is traveling into the other through the crossover because there is no split in the middle.  It is a poor design.  I think the only thing we can do is cut through both sides of the one of the lines, creating a gap in power if both trains are not running.  Or just decide I am not going to operate any conventional equipment on these two loops.  I have six other independent loop to do that on.

Atlas does not build their products for "command control use" only.  I would suggest you contact Atlas with a drawn copy of your layout and a detailed description of how you know that power from one loop is "leaking" into another.  In fact, now that I think about it, I would be surprised if power from one side of your transformer didn't flow through both loops when the second handle was shut down because otherwise one segment of each crossover would have to be dead (and thus cause trains on one of your two loops to stop at each crossover) in order to prevent leakage.

I think that Atlas will tell you to use insulating pins to completely deaden the crossovers, and then use a series of relays and insulating track sections on all four sides of the crossover to power the crossover based on which loop's train is actually entering the crossover.  That way, the crossover will only be powered by one loop, and you might even be able to avoid collisions with this method.

The insulating part for multiple pieces of track is pretty easy, but which relay(s) to use I will leave to our forum electrical experts.

Chuck