Page 24 - B2B 1 to 7

Turnouts also seem to have a mysterious aspect that, dare I say, might frighten and confuse you! This is the use of live frogs. The frog is the V-shaped part where the wheels travelling on one rail cross-over its parallel twin (see diagram below). There are essentially two styles of turnout: insulated or dead frog (Peco brand these as ‘Insulfrog®’) and live frog (or Peco branded ‘Electrofrog®’). It is a personal choice as some prefer the simplicity of the dead frog turnouts as they are easier to wire; live frog turnouts require polarity switching. Wiring will be covered in a separate issue by John Firth. In addition to these, Walthers /Shinohara also manufacture turnouts in varying radii. Many of these come marked DCC-ready. It is a matter of personal choice, but for me I have used code 75 live frog turnouts for many years with no extra wiring and no shorting issues – even with long- wheelbase brass steam locos (on #6/medium radius and above).
At this stage if you want to have motors switch your turnouts you need to consider how to make provision for this, either on the board surface or below the board. If the latter, ensure you drill through the board where any turnout/switch activator is to go – doing it later after the turnout is down will end in tears, trust me.
Wiring
In this section I will confine my comments to attaching feed wires. John Firth will deal with wiring in detail in an upcoming section of this series. Ensure each section of track has feed wires – do not rely on fishplates to carry current. These should be soldered to the underside of rail preferably, but the side of the rail will suffice provided none of the wire or solder protrudes above rail height.
Cleaning
My final section is on a topic that everyone has a different preference on - track cleaning. You may think you have the best solution to this already, but my experience may show otherwise.
I mentioned earlier that the one thing that can mess up the reliability of a point or turnout is detritus or ‘muck’ between the blades and the stock rails. This build-up can be the result from the use of abrasive blocks, like Bright-boy or Peco’s popular PL-41 rail cleaner. These or any other form of abrasive all shed their non- conductive deposits in the worst places and are the most common cause for the blades to not fully make contact with the stock rails. The other main culprit is the muck that gets attracted to plastic wheels through static electricity. This is mostly made up of dust and track cleaner deposits and is bonded to the wheels by the use of liquid rail cleaners. This muck is again mostly shed in the most inconvenient places. Thankfully most new RTR stock now come with metal wheels. I would certainly recommend you change out any plastic wheels of your stock as soon as possible (if you buy a pack every time you visit a show, model shop, or order online, it is less painful). Many club, group or show layouts have already banned the use of plastic wheel sets. Metal wheels also ‘polish’ the rail which further reduces the need to clean the layout if it is operated regularly.
I have heard many folk say that; “rails oxidise over time and I need to use abrasives to get rid of it”. I say; “If you don’t abrade it, it won’t tarnish”. One of the turning points on my attitude to track cleaning was a statement from a well known and respected senior ‘track expert’, who is often seen at our events. I remember a similar conversation taking place about tarnished track, until he pointed out that when you take a new piece of rail out of its box - where it may have been for years, it’s not tarnished is it? So why scratch that surface up to make it do so? Yes it’s hard to keep the track clean while painting or laying ballast, but painting small sections and wiping it off while the paint is wet, or using a damp cloth (water) to remove glue will avoid the need to use abrasives. By continually scratching the surface you are not only removing the
polished surface, but you are making a key for all the muck to cling to. At worst, you are changing the shape of the top of the rail, and this will not only affect how well your stock runs along the rails, but will undoubtedly affect the quality and consistency of the electrical contact area between wheel and rail. Continual reshaping will eventually have a detrimental effect on the tractive effort of your locos.
The best track cleaner is a piece of dry, soft, lint-free cloth. No liquids, no chemicals and no abrasives. If you can’t reach your entire layout, then the Centre-Line track cleaning cars, or the Woodland Scenics wand with the non-abrasive pads work just as well. I have been known to use nylon pan scrubbers for stubborn crud (dry paint and glue), and if I get really desperate – a contact cleaner for gold contacts, but that is a very, very, very last resort.
OK, I’m not going insist that my way is the best, but I will leave you with this thought. Even though my railway room is still seeing a lot of construction going on, and every box I take from the shelves seems to have a thick layer of dust on it, I can still put any loco on what has been built so far and run it with DCC, without any issues, and without having to scrub the track! That has to count for something.
If you feel it’s too late for your track, you could always try polishing your track with silverware cleaner, it will not restore the profile, but it may reduce the crud-retaining scratches. Here is a photo of the deposit generated from using a Peco Rail Cleaner on just one medium radius live frog turnout and one yard (36”) of track. Draw your own conclusion.
There is only one caveat to the above, and that is I found it very hard to build custom point-work without scratching the tops of the rail, but then practice makes perfect.
We will continue over to the next issue when Back2Basics we will cover my track-laying method.
I would like to thank Mike Arnold, John Firth, and the Tom Watson for their editorial assistance with this article.