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                                  Wiring Electrofrog Points

                                  Picture
                                  This technique is detailed extensively in other places on the interweb, by people who are probably more qualified than me. However, this is what I did. The idea is to adapt the points to wire the "frog" through a switch. This enables the blades of the point to always have the same polarity as the main running rail, and the "frog" polarity is changed to the correct polarity through a switch.

                                  It enebles much smoother running and eliminates stray wheels shorting the system.

                                  This can be used with either DC or DCC and any scale.

                                  The Principle

                                  Picture
                                  The basic principle is to wire the "frog" through a switch (in my case a Seep PM1) while eliminating the need to rely on the point blades for electrical contact. The two outer rails are connected with their corresponding blade. This reduces the chances of a stray wheel shorting the point and guarantees the supply of electricity to all the rails.

                                  Blue: constant power (either + or -)
                                  Red: opposite constant power
                                  Green: changes polarity via switch on the point motor

                                  Stage 1:

                                  Picture
                                  On the underside of the point, I removed the soldered connectors with a quick dab with a soldering iron.. This creates two seperate sections on the point.

                                   

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                                  Some one had already soldered extra connections to the point blades, so these had to be removed.

                                  Stage 2:

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                                  Solder the two outer rails to their corresponding blade.

                                  Stage 3:

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                                  The wires are then passed through the baseboard and connected to the DCC bus and the switch. One wire to D & E come from the DCC bus to power the rails and the other is the dropper fixed to the point in stage 2. This means that the switch is being fed from two sources and increases reliability. The green wire from F is the going to the frog. A, B and C are for the switching mechanism. I will cover this later.


                                   

                                  Hopefully you get the basic idea. It gives much better running and ensures the point is always fed correctly and you are not relying on the blade connecting for power to the mid section and the frogs.

                                  This is the result: nice, smooth, slow running: 

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