Model Railroading > Shinohara wiring question

On Shinohara switches you do have to isolate the frog side rail to keep from getting a dead short when you open switch? Been 15 years since I messed with that brand and my memory is kinda foggy. TIA
Michael T Kerner
Collinsville, IL

Posted from Android

I think it depends upon when the switch was manufactured, they have changed.
Currently Walthers sells their brand of turnouts but they say Shinohara on the bottom of the ties, these are the same geometry as the former Shinohara marketed switches.
I am using the Walthers versions to replace the Shinohara switches on my layout because they fit the existing track alignment.  I'm doing this after converting to DCC; the traditional design of the older Shinohara switches results in intermittent shorts between the stock rail and the points, usually when throwing the switch.  What used to be tolerated by old DC controls now trips the DCC circuit breaker.
The older switches are wired with the frog and both points assuming the polarity of the closed switch point and stock rail, and the points are connected with a solid metal plate.
In order to assure that there was a good connection between the stock rail and the point many of us wired a SPDT switch to change the polarity of the frog more reliably than by trusting the contact from the point to the stock rail, I assume this (finally) gets back to you question about wiring the frog.
The newer "DCC Friendly" switches have each stock rail and point with their repective polarity and they have insulated joints on all four corners of the frog.  The frog can be wired as was done but the dead spot is quite short and you may get away with leaving it dead now that almost all engines have many pick-up wheels.
I'm no expert but I hope this helps.

You can modify the old Shinohara switches to be DCC friendly. The easy mod is to use a Dremel cutoff disc to cut the rails just in front of and behind the frog. The slip 0.015 plastic strip in the gap and glue it with ACC. Then solder jumpers from the stock rails to the rails leading to the point rails (closure or wing, I can never remember the proper terminology). The drawback to this mod is you may get occasional shorts when a metal wheel contacts the open point rail and stock rail simultaneously. This is because the point rails are connected by a metal throwbar and hinge. Modern Shinohara switches did away with this. There are several references on the internet, like this one:

http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches.htm

Mike

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/02/15 17:40 by WP282.