Stalling on Electrofrog points

[IanLMS]

I had issues with 3 peco electrofrog points where it would stall as soon as the wheels hit the frog. The culprit was the frog wire becoming detached from the point. A quick tug of the frog wire and you will soon fit out if it is secure or broken away. Rather than lift the point, i re-drilled a hole adjacent to the point and soldered it direct to the frog rail.

Just another possibilty to consider.

[Brian]

A multimeter is a good investment and needn't cost a fortune, a basic meter can be picked up for around £5 to £10 on ebay. Example... Typical eBay sale link
On a DCC powered layout to check voltage set the meter to its AC voltage range.

Many diesel outline locos have multi wheel pick up for power collection. i.e. Front and rear bogie wheels collecting power, so one set of wheels is on the powered section at any one time! Steam outline and especially smaller locos may well be able to sit in the dead area totally!

[Carl L]

Time to check things out.

Thanks for the helpful replies.

[Mountain Goat]

Yes. The all wheel pickup bogie diesels have amazing pickup abilities, so are able to glide over shorter dead sections with ease. Most have flywheels on the motor shafts as well, which also aid to carry the momentum through. On my last layout which was DC, I had switchable automated sections which worked by having isolated sections of track to stop trains when I had the layout in automatic mode. The only issue was, when I had my first all central drive Bachmann diesel loco which was driven and had double pickups at both ends including a flywheel on the motor shaft, it would glide through these track sections as if they were not there! My track section length to stop trains had to be doubled in length when these central drive diesels came along.

Steam locos normally have their drive wheels picking up the current. Sometimes one may have the extra few wheels and ideally a tender to aid in the current collectivity, but most just use their drive wheels... This means that they are a little more suseptable to stalling, especially 0-4-0's.
Incidentally, when Triang came out with their 0-4-0's (Hornby carried on with the same idea using the same wheelbase), they used a slightly longer wheelbase then the prototype had so that the models were less likely to stall on their dead frog set track pointwork. Hornby took the same geometry though over the years they refined the quality as standards progressed, but the same 0-4-0 wheelbase ad geometry dead frog pointwork is used. So if ones 0-4-0 (E.G. Smokey Joe, GWR 101 type locos and their varients like the class 06 etc) stalls on a dead frog Hornby or Peco set track point, one needs to first check that all the locos pickups are in contact with the wheels, as sometimes those little 0-4-0's can be working well but only one pick up maybe touching the one wheel and this may not show up until the loco tries to slowly cross a set track dead frog point and stalls.
Ok, if the points are not flat not all wheels will be in contact with the rails. I have often had Peco set track and streamline code 100 points raise themselves in the frog area over time (Dead frog as I only had one live frog point in those days). It was likely caused by pinning the point at both ends and the temperature differences causing expansion and contraction were playing their part. Could also be the plastic ageing? Who knows! I did find the answer was to carefully insert a pin through the centre of the frog, being careful not to interfere with thw frog wires under the point.

But going back to the origional subject. Check the point is flat and check that the Seep frog switching is working effectively.
I apologize for long posts... My mind goes off on tangents sometimes!