Do I need to insulate points on a new DCC layout?

[gw1pcd]

I'm new to model railways and am building a layout for my 3 grandsons. I bought a new DCC set recently -East Coast Pullman set - and track extensions C to F so I can build the layout as on the Trakmat supplied and stop there.(Grandsons permitting!)

I

have built a power bus onder the baseboard but was trying to save some work. I read online that insulated fishplates were recommended to prevent short circuits but I noticed that all the points have plastic crossings at the centre so I wondered if it's strictly

necessary. I'm delaying tacking the track down until I hear what's the best practise. I was trying to save a lot of power connection soldering if possible.

That raises another issue. Doyou get much voltage drop due to poor fishplates connection? It

occurs to me that some sidings will be quite remote from the power field and I'm aware some digitial equipment doesn't like that.

[poliss]

While not strictly necessary with insulfrog points, fitting insulated fishplates on the frog rails will ensure that there is no possibility of a short circuit because of out of gauge or over wide wheels.
Have you seen Brian Lambert's website? http://www.brian-lambert.co.uk/

[Rog RJ]

Insulated fishplates aren't usually used with dead frog points, which is what Hornby's are, but can sometimes be usefully fitted between two points forming a cross over between two tracks to overcome the occasional short circuit that can occur with some

locos.

Fishplates can become slightly loose after a period of time due to the expansion and contraction of the track and baseboard so fitting multiple power connections (droppers) will overcome any loss of power from fishplates. In an ideal world I

would fit a dropper to every piece of track but on a 6 x 4 layout maybe every second or third piece of track may be more than enough.

[Brightstar]

Hi gw1pcd,

You need to read this: http://www.brian-lambert.co.uk/DCC.htm

It will answer most of your questions and has a number of diagammes.