Model Railway Forum

Please can someone enlighten me re the difference between insul and electrofrogs in an easy to understand way.
I am planning a layout that will work with both Hornby live steam and dcc so I will have to devise a switchable power supply. Also I need to make the right choice re insul/live points... slips etc to serve both situations.
I have also heard that Peco are introducing unifrog which adds to my confusion.
Can anyone please advise me
Thanks Rob

Welcome to the forum Rob.

I know this isn't answering your question, but DCC needs spotlessly clean track, live steam will make the track very dirty. You will need to carry out a thorough deep clean after a live steam session.

I was similarly confused when I started. Most arguments say that live frogs give smoother running and look more prototypical whereas insulfrog have an insulated crossing point and therefore give less smooth running esp. with short wheelbase locos. Other than this very simple explanation I'm not really qualified to explain further. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along soon to help you very soon.

If you do not have any points currently I really think you have two options. Use Peco Unifrog points as and when they become available (may be a long wait for some types!) or if you need to start now use Electrofrog points.
When using Electrofrog simply fit two Insulated Rail Joiners (IRJs) onto the points Vee rail ends and add additional rail feeds after the IRJs. You dont need to do anything else except for the Electrofrog 3 way point which has to have additional frog polarity switching.
There are further modifications that can be carried out to improve power transfer through the Electrofrog point. 1) Add Point motor operated frog polarity switching, and then 2) Cutting away the tiny link wires bridging the two gaps in the closure rails and bonding each closure rail to its adjacent stock rail. However neither of these two mods have to be undertaken! Note; 2 can only be done if 1 is used.

To go back to the original question an insul (or dead) frog has a plastic frog (the part where one set of rails cross each other) whereas an electro (or live) frog has a metal frog - the advantage of a metal frog is that on locos with a limited number of pick ups the metal frog prevents the stalling that can occur with plastic frogs. IME metal frogs are a must for dcc - I had a couple of dead frogs on a dcc layout, a Hornby T9 had enough waddle and wide enough wheels to create a short circuit as one wheel managed to touch the "wrong" rail leading from the frog, on dc you would not normally notice a momentarily short but on dcc any short no matter how momentarily will cause the dcc system to shut down.

That typo needs an edit.

Thank you Steve - duly amended. R-