Newman Atkinson says:

Mark and Jim,
I have several switches that are stock (mostly Atlas)at least 30 on my staging level. Some with power-able frogs and others are insulated frogs. Some of these on occasion will trigger the breaker on the DCC. and it is usually a momentary spot unless I am rolling very slow. It might work for days and then again it will do it several times in a session. In HO I have had some of what you said. One possibility can be the gauge of your wheels,(sometimes a wider cast wheel will do it. So check the gauge between wheels and ajust if it will allow you if needed. I have been hand laying my own switches lately and have learned a lot building them. A couple of the problems I have run across are the power feeding through the switch rail which is fine but the power for that rail still feeds into the area of the frog. Sometimes the other rail is close to the rail you are rolling on and the wheel will touch the other rail. Sometimes the frog itself is power directed depending which way the switch is thrown and that is generally correct. but as I say the other rail is close. As I was building my homemade switched I cut the rails near the narrow area leading onto the frog where they come closest, but that was not enough. I had to back up the cuts far enough from the frog that the power could not touch the other rail power through the wheels. So I now control the power before and after the frog as the frog to a point there is no contact to the power on the other rail. So far that is working for me. I am now using solid bendable rail for my switch rail. It works good and power is not dependent on the switch rail making good contact to the stock rail. The rail is powered through the PC ties I have installed that make positive contact with the switch rail. I don’t know how successful making changes to N scale are but that is generally what I am running into and all scales will follow the same experiences. The power on the homemade switches use a circuit in the tortoise motor to change the frog power for the power. Some Stock Switches have frogs that can power direct from your motor if you have the circuit. Model Railroader Magazine came up with an article that uses a house switch to through the switch. They are usually spring loaded to stay in the direction you throw it. I went one step further and installed a 3-way switch and used the wire connections to feed the frog or signals depending what you are doing with it. This is a good way to do manual control of your switches. The article was in the magazine 2 or 3 years ago and could be applied to these homemade switches too. I have 4 installed now and work pretty good. My Nephew
is using switches from micro engineering for his HON3 and he runs into this sometimes and he is wanting me to build a replacement switch for him from scratch. Some of these stock switches are suppose to be DCC friendly but not as much as you might think. Hope this helps…..
from Newman Atkinson