# Please help me troubleshoot the frog on my layout



## jargonlet (Dec 21, 2011)

When I was a kid my grandpa made me a ho layout and my great grandpa had an n scale layout. They did all of the work building and maintaining the layouts. Both layouts have been gone since the mid 90’s but I still have some of the rolling stock left. We got rid of most of it because we didn't think it would ever get used. We kept about a dozen HO engines since most of them were cheap and not worth much and a couple of nicer ones, 30 pieces of rolling stock, 3 N scale engines and 13 pieces of rolling stock. Most of what we sold was cheap, pretty beat up and low quality. I am now back home and looking for a job and much to my grandmas dismay I have taken interest in trains again and have been enjoying following your thread. I went to a train show locally a couple of months back and entered the raffle and won this layout. I had started planning a layout but being unemployed I hadn’t had the money to start. Anyway, after the long winded explanation I was wondering if you could help me with an issue with my layout. When I won the layout, it came with 2 LifeLike EMD E7’s and 7 pieces of rolling stock. Both of these work well on the layout but the one’s I already had don’t. My other engines are the steam engine pictured (currently not working), a Life Like GP18 and a Atlas/Kato GE U25B. The EMD E7s have 6 sets of wheels per truck and the GP18 and GE U25B have 4 wheels per truck. They run fine around the track but when they get to the turnout (I believe you all call it a frog but I’m new to this) the GP and GE both stop on the turnout. If I push them past it they pickup power and run fine until they get back to it. I was at a show this weekend and asked one of the dealers about it and he said he thought it was my engines that were the issue. 



























Thanks for any help you can give me and sorry for being long winded.


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## lears2005 (Feb 26, 2010)

You need to power the frog. You will need some kinda device to swich the turn out like a swich machine from tortus or the easy way to go would be get something like to bull frog from fast tracks and that will allow you to run a wire from the swich to the bull frog and everytime you switch the turn out it will power the deverging side so that your loco will run past it with no problems.


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## Brakeman Jake (Mar 8, 2009)

It is likely that your older locos don't have good electrical pickup.It's not unusual for locos that have been stored a long time to need a good clean&lube job to run right.They likely don't pick current with all eight wheels.


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## jargonlet (Dec 21, 2011)

Will the bullfrog work with those plastic things (on the left in the picture) on my frog or do I need to replace it or modify them? They have a hole on each side by the thing you hook your finger on to switch the frog. Since I have never done any track work before, would it be easier to replace the entire thing or buy a bullfrog?


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## jargonlet (Dec 21, 2011)

I got a switch unit installed last night and it fixed the problem. The layout is running nicely now.


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