SIGNAL ELECTRICIAN
On my layout, I have 22 PECO Electrofrog points powered by PECO twin-coil point motors. I have several Capacitor Discharge Units (CDUs) that pulse the twin coil point motors.
I wanted to power the frogs of these points, so I tried PECO auxiliary switches, which piggy-back onto the point motor. But they load some motors too much, resulting in unreliable point switching.
So, I devised the following system: the latching relay frog picker. This frog picker works with either DC or DCC powered layouts.
The Relay
The heart of the system is a 12Vdc 2Amp Double Pole Double Throw (DPDT) latching relay, Jaycar part No. SY4060 $12.95 ea.
The latching relay works as shown in Figure 2. There are two primary circuits, using the four pins on the left and two secondary circuits, using the six pins on the right.
When you pulse one primary circuit, the secondaries of the relay switch one way and stay switched that way.
When you pulse the other primary circuit, the secondaries
