EZ-Track Double turnout problem

[Mdaskalos]

Bought the double turnout (sorry, forget exact product name) -two left-hand turnoust on parallel pieces of straight track allowing for crossover between lines. Anyway:

I had expected the two parallel sides to be electrically isolated, so that two lines sharing this piece for crossover purposes could be independently controlled. The dealer I bought from asserted this was indeed the case, and pointed out two small gaps in the rails in the crossover area that he thought would accomplish this purpose.

Well, not so. When hooking this up into my budding young layout, either transformer powered both lines. The direction setting for the switches made no difference in this regard. I tried powering/depowering the frogs to see if that made a difference, to no avail. Tried to see if I could unscrew and disassemble it to get one turnout of to replace the metal joiners in the center with plastic joiners. Found that the switches were in more firmly and connected to the guts of the switch, than I wished to mess with. Buttoned it up, and in the end decided to literally break out the metal joiners in the center. I was of course, unable to replace them with anything, but did find it necessary to use a few small dabs of Epoxy on one of the midsection rails that loosened up during my breaking efforts.

Is this performance of this fifty-dollar piece of track what is to be expected? I would have thought that isolation between the two sides would be almost universally preferred.

[richd286]

my crossovers are wired to provide pass through polarity on the assumption that the crossover and approaches are the same or a common cab source.  I would think that if the crossover is a transitional piece between blocks it must be isolated and powered separately. I don't see a crossover as a powered block separator but rather pass through power integrity.

[Hunt]

Since around early 2012 all Bachmann N-gauge turnouts are wired all routes live.