I'm just starting to gather stuff for my dorm railroad, and I bought some Atlas code 55 stuff to start out with from the rather cruddy local hobby shop, the train section consisting of one tiny corner of an otherwise huge hobby/craft center in downtown San Luis Obispo. The Atlas 55 is beautiful, looks as good in proportion and scale as HO 83, but to my horror (well, not really) the turnouts I bought had one peice insulated metal frogs, unlike the insulated and jumpered safety frogs I was used to. Powering frogs has never made a great deal of sense to me... Anyway, I thought about the solid frog issue logically and I decided that because it was insulated, it would work the same way as the beginners' frogs. What applications does the metal frog have? There was a diagram on the back of the package with a bunch of Atlas components (snap relays and such) but I didn't quite get what they were trying to illustrate. Thanks
Atlas designed the Code 55 turnouts to have the frogs powered and be DCC friendly. If you power the frog, your smaller engines will have an easier time rolling across the frog without stalling. The frog is insulated from the rest of the rails so it can assume the proper polarity according to how the points are thrown. I am not totally familiar with all of the Atlas products they recommend to power the frog, but I am using a SPDT slide switch. A SPDT switch has three contacts. The middle contact is connected to the solder pad on the side of the turnout (which powers the frog). The other two contacts are connected to your track power. Other kinds of turnout switch machines can route power to the frog the same way a SPDT slide switch does. These include, but are not limited to, the Atlas switch machine, Tortoise, even a Caboose Industries ground throw (w/ power routing). If you want, you can also leave the frog "dead" and it will behave just like an isulated frog. I don't know if this helped but I hope it did.
