How to I wire around [ie isolate then drop feeders from the frogs] a three way turn out? I'm using old style code 70 Shinohara and two Tortoise motors. I have no problems with my standard turnouts, but I'm at a loss as to which Tortoise gets which frog wire on the three way. Can you give me any help or point me in the right direction.

-- Chris Dante (m1919@cshore.com), November 09, 2001

Answers

You don't. I have studied the code 83 3-way Shinohara and decided that it was too difficult to try to isolate the frog on it.

Your best course of action is to not use the 3-way at all, if possible. My club had already banned the use of 3-ways before I came along preaching DCC. I know someone who has one on his layout and it is trouble - routinely shorting out the track when moving.

If you have a home with limited space, you may say, I have no choice. They can be used. My friend does. It's not the end of the world if you absolutely have to use it.

I don't have a diagram on how to power route the turnout even without the frog being isolated. After all, people have been doing it for decades before the concept of DCC friendly turnouts came along. Maybe someone reading this does and can point you to a web page.

My friend uses the Shinohara code 83 3-way with the tortise "installed per the manufacturers instructions" - which claim, and in theory, should not short out the track when properly installed. My friend swears he removed the Shinohara wipers from the points. You should do the same. However, since he maticulously installed the torti per the instructions, he did not modify the circuit boards with the torti. Still, the turnout shorts out. (It was during an operating session we discovered that it frequently shorted. Operating sessions are bad times to troubleshoot shorts. I haven't been back since to find the problem.)

Given he appears to have done it right, I'd suggest that you either modify the circuit board in a tortise if you are going to use them and/or use a light bulb as my web pages SUGGESTS and/or use an electronic circuit breaker like sold by Tony's Train Exchange or the Digitrax PM-4.

-- Allan Gartner (wiringfordcc@augustmail.com), November 10, 2001.