so after reading your thread i am asking myself should all turnouts get gaps such as the ones described or just the power routed ones. If i get a multimeter how can i identify the differance in turnout style ?
The power routing switches should have gaps according to the instructions that come with them or if those are not available, refer to that same thread, as someone provided me with excellent information. The reason to provide a gap on a normal switch would be to isolate that line from your power, so that you could park an engine on that siding and kill the power. On DCC normally that does not matter because only the engines you select respond but a lot of guys don't like leaving there engines "on" all the time and also, a lot of the engines with sound will sit there and constantly make sound the whole time they have power. This gets annoying after a while - hence the need to kill the power. In summary, if you have normal switches, you do not "need" gaps.
One way you can visibly tell the difference between and insulated frog and a power routing frog is that the power routing switches will have metal frogs as opposed to the big plastic gaps (insulated frogs) on normal switches. Also, if you flip them over, on the power routing switches, you can see jumper wires underneath connecting like polarity rails. As far as checking them with a multimeter, study the diagrams in this post of that same thread to get a real good idea of how they work and how the multimeter will respond...
http://forum.zealot.com/t113425/#post388290
Is that about as clear as mud or have I really muddled things up now?
You might try simplifying things and testing your DC engine on your DCC system on just a single piece of track. If that works, then you can start narrowing down the problem on your oval. If not, then... well... let's just see what happens.