Crossover wiring in DCC
Crossover wiring
I have read through Gartner's Wiring for DCC website and I might just have brain freeze but I feel it best to ask the question before I really screw something up.
I have 2 parallel tracks wired correctly for DCC (NCE PowerPro). Looking down east along the tracks, the left hand rail of each track is wired to the same side of the DCC bus (black wire) and the right hand rails are similarly wired to
the other side of the DCC bus (red wire). I am going to construct a cross over between the 2 tracks so a train say going east on track A can cross over and run east on Track B. My turnouts will be 2 Walthers code 83 DCC friendly turnouts.
On these turnouts the frogs are isolated with cuts in the frog rails fore and aft of the frog, and internally the turnouts have jumpers to power the rails.
As I look at these turnouts, I will not have to insulate the diverging routes of the 2 turnouts from each other where they meet but can just solder the rail joiners between them. The plus and minus rails through the crossover are consistent and do not electrically touch each other except at the frogs which are isolated and non-powered (The frogs, of course could be power routed through the tortoise contacts.) Am I correct in my assumptions here?
Now this morning I connected the 2 diverging routes of the turnouts as a crossover, ran continuity tests with my multimeter which proved OK and no shorts and then made a temporary DCC connection from my NCE PowerCab bench test unit to the point end of one of the turnouts. I successfully ran a sound locomotive back and forth through the crossover. Maybe I am confusing DC wiring with DCC wiring, but since the turnouts both are DCC friendly with isolated frogs I should not have any shorts. Right?
John
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Crossover Wiring
Provided the frogs are isolated, and the points/closure rails are not doing some kind of power routing beyond the frogs (an unlikely situation), you should be OK. Test it out by jumpering with some clip leads and see if everything continues to work without a short. The polarity issues with DC and DCC are the same. If the wiring works for one, it will for the other. Wiring for a live frog turnout is the same for either as well.
Rob Spangler
Cross Over Wiring
Jack Strong
Jack From Star, Idaho
"DCC" wiring
Just remember "DCC" track wiring is exactly the same as conventional DC wiring.
Any track wiring book ever published will work for DCC. The only difference is that you just have to wire it for only one "throttle".
Dave Husman
Modeling the Wilmington & Northern Branch in 1900-1905
Iron men and wooden cars.