Atlas O turnouts and DCS

IMO, power the frog. That way you can run anything.   The switch is internally bonded.  Do not heat the turnout.  I have had guys melt the plastic permitting the bonding jumper to touch the bottom of an opposite rail.

Check the four gaps at the frog.  Sometimes one or more have closed up causing a short. 

Do not put a lot of force on the frail throw bar.  Dem suckers break real easy.

Good advice. Thanks!

Rail Dawg

I run DCS, and I power my frogs with tortoise switch machines. I see no loss of signal.  Also, everything Tom said about the frog gaps and throw bar is correct.

How do you guys make the frog gaps a little larger? I assume with a Dremel?

Also when using DCS in a crossover situation is there anything in particular you have to watch out for?

Thanks.

A dremel will work much easier if you shorten the wing rails to where the should have been in the first place.  Photo of before/after with a 7.5

I hace a dedicated new 1/4" wood chisel which I use to give a tap to the close joint while the turnout is on a very firm base.  Crude but effective. 

I would not power the frog. (You won't have any problems unless possible problems with locos with very short wheel bases.) My experience has been that if you run two rail DCS, the 18V DC to the track causes a short when you wire the powered frog to an Atlas snap relay. I have replaced dozens of snap relays and it is obvious that

-the snap relay is not sized for O gauge or O scale power levels

-Atlas doesn't care to redesign this

When I installed the turnouts, I cut very small pieces of styrene from a sheet and glued pieces in all of the gaps so that they would not "close up" after hours of operation. So far, so good.

PS. The reason I use the snap relays is that my control panel has red and green LEDs and I use one side of the snap relay to power the LEDs that give an indication of turnout position. (Obviously, the LEDs also warn me that a snap relay is bad.) I would like to find an acceptable substitute-probably something that is continuously rated at 18-22 V AC or DC and about 5 amps, although 10 amps would be attractive as that rating would match a few of my power supplies. Any such relay should have two sets of contacts so that I could use them as described above.

I power all my frogs.  Especially so with the AtlasO ones given the length of the frog casting.   Unpowered frogs combined with short wheelbase steam (0-4-0's and some 0-6-0's) can lead to stalls. Mix in some dirty wheel treads and unpowered frogs can lead to issues with steam tender pickup and some diesels. 

 I tried several AtlasO turnout motors and found them to be poor performers.  I recommend a stall motor machines like Tortoise or Switchmaster.  The Tortoise has contacts for powering the frog - with the Switchmaster I use a SPDT micro switch bearing on the throw rod.  Stall motor switch machines are relatively easy to install out of sight under the benchwork.   Since they are low current  polarity reversed DC devices I wire a bicolor LED in sereies with the motor to get red/green status indication on my control panels. 

Ed has the best approach IMO.  However if you walk with your train wish to go about it in a pragmatic fashion for hand throwing turnouts within arms reach, you could consider using a single pole double throw slide switch to simultaneously throw the points and correctly power the frog. 

I recess mount one which has a  .006" greater throw than the point movement.  I drilled a hole in the slide knob, stiff Z wire connection to the throw bar. Tap the two stock rails and feed the frog w 18 ga.  Simple, cheap, quick.

Shown is a display setup using slide switchs.

I did not know what thickness I used, so got out the digital and measured a sheet. It varied in thickness between .032 inches and .0325". It is pretty stiff but you can cut small pieces with scissors or an Xacto. I used Walthers Goo for the adhesive-a very small amount and just sufficient to keep the styrene in place.

Hope this helps.

I use .010" styrene bonded in place with 5 minute epoxy.  Once filed, painted, and ballasted they are virtually invisible.

Ed Rappe

For my 100% DCC controlled layout I use Tam Valley Depot Frog Juicers on all of my Atlas O turnout frogs.  They work great.  Power them with adjacent DCC track power and then attach one output lead to the each frog.

The only drawback is that TAM Frog Juicers don't like straight DC input power  -- for persons who switch back and forth between DCC and DC. 

OK very good. Thanks! I just ordered some clear .010 styrene sheets.

I'll give those a shot.