DCC questions please

Hi all, OK, so I have made the decision to move into DCC. All my sidings and loops are protected because my peco pointwork is all Insulfrog. Do I have to rewire all the points, or can I simply run 2 more wires into each siding/loop? Regards, scoot

Reply to
scoot
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Just run 2 more wires. You may/may not need insulated rail joiners on the frogs, you do for live frog.

Martin

Reply to
MudMuppet

"scoot" wrote

You don't NEED to do anything. You could actually still allow the points to isolate power from the sidings and park locos in them which you'd not yet converted to DCC.

When you change the point(s) to allow access to and from any one siding then DCC power would be restored (in the same way that DC works) and you could then operate the siding.

I'm not saying this is an ideal scenario, but switched isolated sections can still occasionally be useful even with a digital system.

John.

Reply to
The Goon

I would be inclined to suggest that you'd be better off leaving your wiring as it is and let the turnouts switch sidings as they do for you in DC.

You can add feeds to all your sidings, which you would need to do if you wanted to leave sound/lighting idling, but if you do, you'll create problems with back- feeding your turnouts. Basically, you'll end up with the common live frog problem of switch blade and neighbouring stock rail at opposite polarity when the turnout is switched the other way - a recipe for wheels to cause a short.

It isn't a perfect situation, but leave it as it is. Isolated sidings can be useful even in DCC!

Graham Plowman

Reply to
gppsoftware

Not with insulfrog points you won't. If you back-feed insulfrog points the switchblade and adjacent stock rail will be at the same polarity. As a result of that, you can bond them together, as I do on my garden layout.

Reply to
Jane Sullivan

garden

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Jane,

Yes, you are quite right - my apologies.

Graham Plowman

Reply to
gppsoftware

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