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I generally swear by Peco turnouts, but they do have two weaknesses. The first is the aforementioned "tightness" through the flangeways. The second is the point rails get their power pickup through physical contact with the stock rails, which means you need to keep those contact points clean and paint-free. I use NeoLube there as it looks like grease but is actually conductive.
On the modules and layouts my customers have wanted to use Peco80 turnouts and trackage on, I haven't heard of any functional problems when first installed. However after some years of use, I've had to replace several Peco80 turnouts due to the spring-throw breaking...sometimes the spring itself, sometimes plastic parts. I'd estimate I've been able to fix about half of the breakage problems in place, the rest needed a new turnout. All my Peco customers wanted Insulfrogs to direct voltage in the direction the turnouts were thrown, and in operating on these modules and layouts, it is a royal PITA to have to clean several turnouts' rails at the point toes so that the points and adjacent stock rails would be electrically contiguous.
Tightness? That's interesting Dave. The only complaint I have heard (and personally dealt with) with PECO turnouts is the excessively generous clearance between the rail and guard rails and in the frog. Fix is usually to tighten the flangeways by gluing a strip of polystyrene on the rail side of the guardrails.As for powering the points, yes there is no solid electrical connection with either the adjacent stock raills or with the closure rails. That is true with most commercially made turnouts (like for example Atlas, and even Bob's favorite Micro Engineering). Yes t would be nice to have a solid connection in that area but I don't hold much hope for this to happen.
First of all Bob, thank you for providing a photo and more details about the ME turnouts. The jumper wires between the stock and closure rails are likely not soldered but spot-welded to the rail, but that's neither here nor there.
I do acknowledge some weaknns in the throw-bar where it can break after many years of operation but I always contributed it to excessive pressure of the throw rod from the Tortoise machine used to throw the points. If a proper diameter rod was chosen, and the machine's fulcrum was properly adjusted for the amount of throw, the the breakage would not occur. I don't recall encountering throw-bar breakage due to the internal spring.
As for the insulfrog and using points for power routing, to me that to me is asking for trouble (with any brand turnout). Just power both exiting tracks permanently and the problem is instantly solved (other than the points themselves not having a solid electrical connection).
Except if you're still using DC, want your switchable trackwork to go dead when the turnout is thrown (like to park a power lashup there and run another train in the same block)...and don't want to install a toggle switch to turn the power on & off in that section of track. The main "problem" iMO is when an engine stops on the point rail...and with Insulfrogs, dirty point toes are a problem either way, whether the two routes on the far side of the plastic frog are permanently powered or not.
Well then, still hardwire both sets of tracks exiting the turnout, then gap the siding and install a switch to kill the power to the siding. Relying on points to power the siding is *NEVER* a good idea. I have seen too many problems with that arrangement. Yes, it slightly complicates the wiring and operation, but IMO well worth it for reliability.In N scale we lived with plastic frog commercial turnouts since N scale's infancy. I believe only when Shinohara C70 track was introduced we finally got metal frog, and this was before DCC, however that track system was never really widely accepted.
In N scale we lived with plastic frog commercial turnouts since N scale's infancy. I believe only when Shinohara C70 track was introduced we finally got metal frog, and this was before DCC, however that track system was never really widely accepted.
LOL, yes, I sit corrected. That looks like Arnold track. The rails did not look like anything resembling rail profile and the (movable) frog was stamped from thin sheet metal as a single piece with the points, but it is in fact a metal frog.
Arnold Rapido track is what I began with back in the 1960s.The rail had what Arnold referred to as a "self-cleaning" profile, with a relatively narrow top, that was supposed to remain cleaner as compared to rails with a flatter/wider top that was more prototypical.
Also, as I recall, the frog was designed such that an Arnold wheel (which had a deep flange) could actually ride on the flange as it traversed the frog.
...Well, actually this is still the case with PECO and other brands of commercially made turnouts with overly generous flangeways. The "toy-train" wide tread wheels travel over those frogs the way they supposed to (the treads are wide enough to span both the wing rail and the nose) traveling smoothly through the frog. But when more modern wheels with narrower tread and low flanges travel through that frog, the tread is not wide enough so the wheel drops down bottoming out in the flange, causing the rolling stock to dip down and come back up when the tread finally climbs back onto the railhead. I'm sure that in those older turnouts the flangeways were even wider, so the wheel flanges were riding in the flanges while traveling over the frogs.
Even the prototype drops a little, due to the tapered tread. At the point of the frog, the wheel is riding close to the flange, where the diameter is larger. After leaving the frog, the wheel is supported by the wing rail, but on the outer edge of the tread, where the diameter is smaller. The only way to avoid it would be to use a flat tread, with no taper, which would cause a lot of other problems.That's one of the reasons for the "clunk" when a wheel goes over the frog.
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Topic: Peco "Streamline" Code 55 "American Outline" track (possible new product?) (Read 8822 times)
