Help with ME #6 Code 55 Turnouts

[nickelplate759]

George, thank you kindly. And others, looks like I'm headed back to old reliable, to Atlas C-55 #7's (and or #5's). I am foot dragging too
much with this turnout wiring process for a small 2x4 layout.

You're welcome - you can make either the Atlas or these work, they're just different.  I've used both.
I should also add that I'm firmly in the "you can never have too many feeders" camp.

[nkalanaga]

If you're never going to run more than one train, which seems likely on a 2x4 foot layout, I'd just jumper the short rails beyond the frog to the outside rails, as shown in one of the diagrams.  As long as you don't have any reversing sections (probably not on a small layout), and no block wiring (not needed for one train), that would make the turnouts electrically the same as the Atlas ones.  A short piece of your #22 wire, with just enough stripped on each end to fit the rail base, would work perfectly for a jumper, and they could be painted to match the ballast if needed.

[robert3985]

Finally got after this. Used 16 for bus and 22 for feeders to turnouts. Tried to test it and nothing. When I pulled off one
of the turnouts, it did run on one section between the frog on the turnout and a section of track. Back to the drawing
board.

George, thank you kindly. And others, looks like I'm headed back to old reliable, to Atlas C-55 #7's (and or #5's). I am foot dragging too
much with this turnout wiring process for a small 2x4 layout.

Chuck,

Atlas turnouts are not going to make this any easier for you.  In fact, you don't need any feeders to your turnouts to make everything work as long as your trains will run with dead frogs, and on my layout, my ME turnouts have dead frogs and my shortest engines run just fine through them...Alco S-2's (brass).

The outside rail (the rail closest to the edge of your layout) will not be powered on either turnout until you power up the outside spur.  The turnout rails are getting their power from the rails of the mainline and the rails of both spurs...all electrically connected by soldered rail joiners.

If you follow my directions here, you'll have your turnouts and spurs working in no time.  Okay?  And, you won't have to buy new turnouts, saving you some money and time.

(1) De-solder all of your feeders from both turnouts...ALL of them, and remove the turnouts if that can be done easily.
(2) This should not affect the power to your spurs, so test your spurs to see if they're (A) powered, and (B) that your test engine runs the same direction as on your mainline on both spurs. If your engine runs in the same direction on both spurs as the mainline, skip to step (6)
(3) If your engine runs a different direction on one or both of your spurs than on the your mainline without you switching its direction at the throttle, then you know you've wired that spur a$$-backwards.
(4) Remove the feeders from your spur where your test engine runs in the opposite direction as your mainline, and solder the feeders to the opposite rails they were first soldered to.
(5) Test your spur again, to make sure your engine is running the same direction as your mainline.
(6) Once you have tested both spurs without the turnouts and they run the same direction as your mainline, install your turnouts one at a time, the right turnout first, and solder your rail joiners to mainline and/or spur rails which connect with your turnout. 
(7) Test the right turnout you have just installed with your test engine to see if the layout isn't shorting out and that the engine runs through it okay.
(8 ) Do the same thing for the left turnout as in steps (6) & (7)

That should fix the problem.

Just to make it easier, I'm re-posting the photo/diagram I sent you back on page 2 the first time.  Remember to solder the rail connectors I've emphasized with yellow lines to their respective rails.

Photo (1) Feeder and rail joiner diagram for Chuck's turnouts and sidings:


You should be up and running in about ten minutes if you follow these directions exactly.

Good luck!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[chuck geiger]

Bob thank you for your pinpoint guidance. So I have a regular terminal red and black positive and negative connection to the track from the power pack. Then begin the regional jumpers around the two turnouts and the front tracks ahead of the turnouts. In the test run, the engine ran around the curve to the 2nd turnout at stopped just past the frog. Only getting power from the red and black DC wires. How is the turnout powered? My big headache - I don't want to power switch machines nor the frogs. Just want power to the turnouts.

1.) Is this the only connection to the main power?
2.) How is the connection at the front of the first turnout from the bridge powered? - From the normal route?

[chuck geiger]

Good advice here.  And as has been said, it ain't complicated...

New ME turnouts have an isolated frog, that can be either powered or left dead.  My experience is that everything I have runs through the dead frogs on ME #6's without hesitation.

If you simply want to use the over-center switch throwing mechanism without installing any power routing underneath, the turnout should work just fine because closure rails are electrically connected to their adjacent stock rails...which means, they receive their power and their polarity from the stock rails of the turnout they're adjacent to, and to which the toes of the points come in contact with...so no shorting.

However, the two "frog rails" coming off the other side of the frog gaps (opposite the closure rail/point/switch side) have to be powered by the rails they're connected to...or by feeders...depending on your wiring and block placement, they they are entirely isolated from each other.

If you are not soldering your rail joiners to your rails, this practice only encourages random electrical problems, especially after painting/weathering and ballasting your track. 

Best practice is to solder a feeder to the middle of each and every piece of rail on your layout...which gets rid of a multitude of potential electrical problems, in both DC and DCC powered layouts.  Never trust rail joiners to conduct electricity effectively...especially if they're not soldered to both rails at a joint.

Okay, that said, to get your new spurs up and powered quickly, and your turnouts functional, the simplest way to do it is to run feeders from your powered trackage to the respective rails on both spurs. 

To keep things straight, color code the wires you use.  I use red 22AWG solid-core copper wire for the track nearest the edge of the layout, and black 22AWG solid-core copper wire for the other track.  As Peter ( @peteski ) has mentioned numerous times, you can use finer wire just as effectively...but solid-core is easiest to use.

After you've run feeders to your dead spurs and you've tested them and they run okay, your turnouts should be okay...without having to run any feeders at all to them.

Photo (1) Reading is harder than looking at a picture, so here's a quick diagram of feeders (red and blue) and rail joiners (yellow):


Although running feeders to your main power buses is preferable, running them from live rail will get you up and going quickly...

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

Sorry for you having to repost.

[nickelplate759]

If the engine stopped just past the frog, it's possible that the short rail on the turnout next the frog (that I marked yellow) is electrically dead.  Presumably you tried to solder it to the rail attached to it by the rail joiner as Bob suggested (where he marked yellow) but have you checked with some kind of continuity tester  (a multimeter, or even a light bulb with a battery) to see if that's really the case?  I've been caught more than once (with both Micro-Engineering and Atlas turnouts) by a bad electrical connection.

[jdcolombo]

Hi Chuck.

Take a look at Bob's photo.  ONE of the three rails with the blue wire and ONE of the three rails with the red wire will need power from your power pack (it doesn't actually have to be a single piece of track that gets power from your power pack.  As long as ONE of the rails with a blue wire connection is hooked to the negative of your power pack and ONE of the rails with the red connection is hooked to the positive of your power pack, all is fine).  The "jumpers" in Bob's photo will take care of the rest.  But you also need to make sure that you have metal rail joiners (yellow spots on Bob's photo) and it is best to solder those rail joiners to insure good electrical conductivity.

From your description, it sounds like one of your rail joiners isn't conducting electricity well.  That's a common problem, solved by soldering the joiners to the rail.  And that's easy to do - take a wire brush on a Dremel (or if you don't have a Dremel, use a piece of 200-grit sandpaper) and brush/sand the outside of the rails where the joiner goes so that the rail is clean (shiny).  Put a tiny bit of flux on the outside ends of the rails that will be joined and put the joiner on, with an additional tiny bit of flux on the top of the joiner where the rails touch each other.  Heat up your soldering iron, and tin the tip with a bit of rosin-core solder.  Now touch your iron to the bottom or outside side of the rail joiner, while at the same time touching solder to the top of the rail joiner on the outside web of the rail (e.g., between the railhead and the joiner).  If you have a hot, tinned iron, in a second solder will flow into the rail joiner and form a thin coat on the outside of the rail in the web.  Rinse and repeat for all joiners.  Doing this will make sure that you have electrical conductivity between sections of rail joined by rail joiners.

John C.

[chuck geiger]

  Thanks fellows, this is why RW rocks!

[chuck geiger]

If the engine stopped just past the frog, it's possible that the short rail on the turnout next the frog (that I marked yellow) is electrically dead.  Presumably you tried to solder it to the rail attached to it by the rail joiner as Bob suggested (where he marked yellow) but have you checked with some kind of continuity tester  (a multimeter, or even a light bulb with a battery) to see if that's really the case?  I've been caught more than once (with both Micro-Engineering and Atlas turnouts) by a bad electrical connection.

That was in the first tests, not at present. Follow up posts show there might be a problem with the conductivity to the turnout.

[chuck geiger]

What is the best practices application of the jumpers? Solder the sides? Bent "L" flipped up?

[chuck geiger]

Wow a parallel universe: This is what happened to me yesterday....
http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/22220

[jdcolombo]

What is the best practices application of the jumpers? Solder the sides? Bent "L" flipped up?

For short runs like this, I use 24-gauge solid wire.  Strip about 1/4", form an L, and then solder the long leg of the L into the webbing on the outside of the rail.  I would go "down & up" - that is, I'd drill a hole (1/16" is usually right for 24-gauge wire) between the ties on Rail 1; drop one end of the wire through the hole; strip and solder other end.  Drill same hole between ties on Rail 2; feed wire up through hole; cut to size, strip; solder to Rail 2.  Key is to make sure rail is clean, and I tin both the rail web and the wire first.  Then it's just a matter of putting the wire up against the tinned area of the web, and literally touching it with a hot, tinned iron, and the connection is made.  One second, max.  No melting ties this way.

John C.

[robert3985]

What is the best practices application of the jumpers? Solder the sides? Bent "L" flipped up?

Chuck,

There are lots of ways to solder feeders to your rails.  Today, let's do it quick and dirty to get your layout up and running.  John ( @jdcolombo ) has it right, but you might have to use a tiny bit of flux, even with both feeder and rail web/foot pre-tinned.

Here's a blurry pic of a typical feeder after being sloppily soldered to a rail on my quick and dirty DCC test module I built several years ago.  I wasn't concerned about appearance, only about function but it illustrates a typical "L" feeder.

The trick to making this easy is to bend the long leg of the "L" a little so that when you insert the feeder into the 1/16" feeder hole between ties and immediately adjacent to the rail, the short "toe" of the "L" gets pressed up against the rail web, so you don't have to hold it in place...it holds itself.  After applying several thousand feeders over the decades, this little trick has saved me countless hours of labor and frustration.

Photo (1) - "L" shaped feeder soldered to outside rail web:


Nowadays, I solder my feeders to the underside of the rail foot, between ties.  This is difficult to do with just a soldering iron, (I use my resistance soldering station and the "tweezer" with one bent probe) but it hides the feeders so they are nearly impossible to see either with the naked eye or in photos.  This can be problematic if an electrical problem pops up, so I'd recommend the "L" shaped feeder protocol for you.  Just don't get a blob of solder at the joint for the best appearance, which pre-tinning both wire and rail web should take care of.

Good luck!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[chuck geiger]

Bob, John and George - Mucho thanks!

[OldEastRR]

For the record, Atlas C55 turnouts have electrically isolated frogs that need to be wired to a switching machine to power them correctly for each leg. So that means adding more wires than you would with an ME turnout. Or you leave the Atlas frog unwired and unpowered.