I have just again wired up this point for DCC and again it struck me why oh why no frog dropper wire like so many other Electro frog point offerings from Peco, and why no jumper wires to simply snip and make the need for butchery with the disk cutter,fret saw and soldering iron irrelevant! Although I have been a modeller and hobby electronics enthusiast for 50 odd years the eyes are going and it is a right pain now to do,and there is always the niggle in the back of the mind that I will foul up, with the advent of RTR stock and clearly more entering the hobby at a newbie level surly this size of turnout is due a make over, just a scaled down mainline version?? Gripe over.....
I have been using these peco points every since they were first produced in 1980. (They were updated in 2010) I fit frog polarity switches to every point and find no difficulty at all soldering a wire to the outside edge of one of the rails that are connected to the frog.
There is no need to have fixed wires to the blades as you will not get a short unless your back to back is way out of gauge. You will get a short if you try to run through the point that is set against you, but you would still get that if the blades were hard wired anyway
With DCC unless you use the Peco ST-413 double straight with connection wires, soldering to the rails is still required in any sidings etc made using flexi-track anyway, so this is a required skill for building a 009 layout.
It is the often recommended method of wiring electrofrog points for DCC though.
One difference between DCC and DC is that should a short occur on a DC layout it is generally pretty obvious which loco is the cause, but in DCC unless the layout is divided into separate power districts everything will come to a halt.
Based on my own experience of my late father in law's DCC N scale layout isolating the point blades from the frog and then wiring them to their adjacent stock rails is unnecessary.
I laid all the track including wiring for frog polarity switching and it all ran without issue for 10 years (when my father in law died).
Likewise I use frog polarity switching on my 009 layouts (*) and only ever had a shorting issue due to incorrect (too wide) back to back measurements (often when a metal tyre had come loose from a plastic centre).
On that basis even if the books tell you to there seems little need to cut the blades and wire them to the stock rails for 009 (and N) use...
(*) That was with Peco track. I've also made hand built points using copper-clad sleepers where the rails are gapped from the frog, but then as the heels of the blades are fixed to the sleeper they are electrically linked to their adjacent stock rails by default)
Quote from: Graeme Dunbar on September 30, 2025, 11:01It is the often recommended method of wiring electrofrog points for DCC though.
One difference between DCC and DC is that should a short occur on a DC layout it is generally pretty obvious which loco is the cause, but in DCC unless the layout is divided into separate power districts everything will come to a halt.
Changing the points to have wires to the blades as apposed to just having the frog switch will make no difference. You will still get a short if the loco is driven through a point set against it. It will happen sooner, about 15mm before the frog, not on the blade section in the point, but it will still happen. If your back to back is so far out as to short on the point blades the item in question will de-rail in every point frog anyway!