If you don't wire the frog on an electrofrog, Does it function the same as an insulfrog? Thanks, Loco1999
No - you wind up with a non- moving loco due to a dead short, as far as I know Shortliner(jack) away up here in the highlands
Shortliner is correct. The electro frog is already wired; there is no requirement to wire the frog to get it to work. Maybe I don't understand the question?
I have used some Peco electrofrog turnouts on a small layout. As far as I know, the frogs are not "wired". If everything is working perfectly, they are electrified by the movable point rails making contact with the inside of the fixed rail for whatever route the turnout is set. However if there is poor contact at that point because of dirty track or because I painted the track grungy black and rusty rail color and paint got onto the contact part of the rail and I can't get it out.... under those circumstances it may help to feed the frog by the contacts of a switch machine or ground throw. I installed ground throws on my layout, even though not needed to throw the Peco turnout, to provide a positive electrical feed to the frog.
Kenneth is right, they are fed by the blades. If the blade doesn't make contact then the whole section of the blade and frog (and if using the turnout for power routing, any track beyond the frog) will not be powered. It is possible with newer code 75 at least (which I have), to fairly easily modify the turnout so the frog can be fed by an external switch without involving the blades (there are isolating bits in the rails with jumpers underneath that can be removed). The blades can then be wired permanently to the stock rail for better reliability. The result is often called DCC friendly, but is actually good for DC too. If you remove the jumpers but DON'T then feed the frog from a switch (and use isolating joiners to the rails at the 'outer' end of the frog) then you will have a dead frog = insulfrog.
Thanks for the replies. I read the directions too. Does anyone use the insulfrogs? Do locos really stall on the frog? Thanks, Loco1999
Short wheel base steam locos (0-4-0, 0-6-0) with no tender pickup tended to stall on the insul frogs in N scale. I am not sure anyone runs these older engines in N scale anymore. I don't know about HO scale. [ December 11, 2005, 09:50 AM: Message edited by: sapacif ]
If the track is clean and the loco is in good order, probably not. But IMHO the all metal frogs look a lot better than the plastic ones
