Electrofrog point misbehaving

[NormanQ4]

I’m finally getting back to report on what I hope will be the final chapter in this story after so many months of agony.

Since last reporting I have been removing track and ballast and installing an additional 14 droppers to the short pieces of track between the points and the crossings.

 

I confidently installed the four RLM’s bought from Hattons and done according to Chris’s wiring diagram.

Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out as planned.

During testing the first loco on the track caused a short when leaving a point and moving into the area affected by the RLM, which I’m thinking was due to the high sensitivity of the PSX circuit breaker reading the operation of the RLM as a fault.

 

I then bypassed the PSX to test that theory and the RLM worked perfectly as it has done for Chris.

Unfortunately the downside was that the system had reverted to the original problem situation I had of me having to remove locos and rolling stock from all points on the layout before a restart was permitted.

 

To make matters worse, often the short warning would not appear on screen so I had to reset the controller to permit a restart.

Sometimes even that would not work and on one occasion after many restart attempts and a Railmaster restart I even had to shut down and restart E-link.

 

I thought that perhaps I would need to create a totally separate block around the crossings as shown in the PSX manual which involves isolating both + and - rails leaving the points.

I ran this idea past an electrician friend and he said that he thought that there was a simpler solution and gave me a sketch of a simple wiring diagram.

 

This involves removing the RLM’s and powering the crossing frogs from the point frogs, with the wire from one point also going to the crossing frog furthest from it, and vice versa for the opposite point and crossing frogs.

This setup worked perfectly, so I warily reconnected the PSX’s but I’m glad to say it continued to work perfectly.

There was no cost involved, just two short pieces of scrap wire for each crossing.

This setup would of course only work if using electrofrog points.

 

My friend has also suggested that I should consider putting relays on the through tracks to prevent collisions, but that will be for another day as I am just happy to have a functioning layout.

 

I guess the four RLM’s will be going on Ebay.

 

Thanks again to all contributors.