USA brass switch upgrade

[enginear joe]

 So outside, I mainly use stainless as I was told to. No sense in re-inventing the wheel here. I was one switch short on my mainline. I had a USED USA brass switch and threw it into my crossover between two loops. It worked well for some of the summer until it started acting up. I noticed some engine stuttered while crossing over it. I always blamed the brass material! Today, everything that could go wrong, did. So the first thing I did was to remove this switch.

 It appears that the power thru the switch comes from the mear contact of the points hitting the main rails? There's wires underneath that connect the point rails, guard rails and frog together so that when the switch is thrown in either direction, the frog gets it's power thru those rails. So when it got dirty, no power was making it thru the whole switch! So even the long Challenger stalled today.

 So, the fastest fix I could think of, was to disconnect the frog, and leave that dead. I then ran jumper wires from each outside rail, to the corresponding points to power the main length of the switch up. (excuse my terminology as I don't know what things are called?)

Now the trains run right thru without stuttering anymore.

Does anyone here use these switches? This maybe a good upgrade for this, when you don't need the frog powered from the rails. Time will tell. The brass itself seems OK. I could always add some more wires to power the frog from another source.

[Jim Miller]

If the frog is not powered you should only have problems with 4 wheel engines like a davenport or eggliner..............Jim

[enginear joe]

Thanks Jim. I'm just worried about the little USA 0-6-0 right now. I may add some extra pickup wheels.