Turnout Railyard Isolation.

[AhmadKane]

I recently procured some turnouts which I would feature in my layout. It'll cause the branching and link to three tracks and potentially a rail depot. I use Minitrix and I have no idea whether these are electrofrog or insulfrogs. Nevertheless, I don't know on which points I would need to isolate these tracks. 

 

 

I'll be feeding power on the three loops. I just need to know the locations in which I would need to isolate to prevent any electrical damages. And what is the best way to isolate these tracks if you do not have plastic joiners with you. 

[Martijn Meerts]

The smaller / tighter Minitrix turnouts are I believe always insulfrog (they have a plastic frog), but they are power routing. If you look at https://static.maerklin.de/damcontent/02/31/02318951a5c7e36916ff9a17b624579f1434534649.jpg, just to the right of the frog, there are 2 somewhat U-shaped metal bits squashed in between the outer rails and the inner rails. If you leave those in, the turnout will always be powered. Remove them, and the turnout will route power. The power routing is not very reliable though.

 

The smoother turnouts are available in both electrofrog and insulfrog, where the insulfrog is identical to the tighter turnouts. The electrofrog also functions the same, but obviously the frog is metal. For analog, you shouldn't have to do anything, but for DCC you'll likely need to manually switch polarity on the frog depending on which direction the turnout is thrown. I don't really have any experience with the Minitrix electrofrog ones though.

 

If you want the loops to be powered separately by different power packs, you'll need a double isolation between both diverging routes of the 3-way switch. If you don't have plastic joiners, just remove the metal joiners, and make sure the rails don't touch after installing. To be extra sure they don't touch, you can glue a bit it styrene in between the rails. 

[AhmadKane]

1 hour ago, Martijn Meerts said:

The smaller / tighter Minitrix turnouts are I believe always insulfrog (they have a plastic frog), but they are power routing. If you look at https://static.maerklin.de/damcontent/02/31/02318951a5c7e36916ff9a17b624579f1434534649.jpg, just to the right of the frog, there are 2 somewhat U-shaped metal bits squashed in between the outer rails and the inner rails. If you leave those in, the turnout will always be powered. Remove them, and the turnout will route power. The power routing is not very reliable though.

 

The smoother turnouts are available in both electrofrog and insulfrog, where the insulfrog is identical to the tighter turnouts. The electrofrog also functions the same, but obviously the frog is metal. For analog, you shouldn't have to do anything, but for DCC you'll likely need to manually switch polarity on the frog depending on which direction the turnout is thrown. I don't really have any experience with the Minitrix electrofrog ones though.

 

If you want the loops to be powered separately by different power packs, you'll need a double isolation between both diverging routes of the 3-way switch. If you don't have plastic joiners, just remove the metal joiners, and make sure the rails don't touch after installing. To be extra sure they don't touch, you can glue a bit it styrene in between the rails. 

 

You can use styrene? I have no idea... 

 

Would it be possible for you to draw the different points needing insulation in the photo up top?

[Martijn Meerts]

The styrene would just be to make sure the rails don't shift and start touching, but it shouldn't be necessary as long as you keep the rails apart about a millimeter or so.

 

For the insulation, it depends a bit on the rest of the track plan. For example, if the 3 tracks are through tracks, and you want to power and control all 3 separately, you'll have to add plastic joiners (or cut the track some other way) where indicated in red. This would also allow you to run trains in different directions on the various tracks. You can also insulate where indicated in blue to be able to toggle the power on and off on the 4th track. 

 

The red insulation would need to be both rails, for the blue insulation only 1 rail is enough. You can then add for example a switch to toggle the power.