Should I put feeder wires on my turnouts. My steam engines some times stalls for a second and takes off agian but the other ones dont. And where sould I put them. Im using code 80 Atlas and NCE power pro 5amp system.
You may have to if you want all of your engines to get through your turnouts. Why is the one stalling? If the others never do, then it isn't a matter of connectivity between wipers and the points, or between the points and their stock rail where they make contact. It must be the length of the dead frog...I'm guessing. Or the frog is uneven, probably high, and causes momentary loss of contact when the engine rocks as it traverses the frog. If the frog is meant to be isolated, and the only way to get your one engine across it is to power the frog, then you must solder a feeder, one, to the bottom or side of the frog point. That feeder's other end will connect to a toggle switch that will reverse polarity. In one position the toggle lets right rail power get to the frog, and in the other position the toggle lets left rail power get to the toggle. That means you will have to throw this switch all the time when you line the turnout. A Tortoise switch machine, for example, has posts that switch power to the frog as you make the machine move the throwbar. So, you wire power to the Tortoise to move the points, but a post on its side will have a wire going up to the isolated frog so that it gets the correct polarity.
I had the same problem with shorter N steamers on the Peco plastic frog particularly when the wheels were dirty. I have changed to all metal frogs and powered them on my new layout - its great now no problems.
