After several months of procrastinating I have at last got around to replacing the
Frog Juicers with mechanically operated micro-switches. Both in place as I write this
although the wiring will have to wait until tomorrow. One going in :-
On this layout frog juicers have been an absolute disaster. First the spikes in the AC wave form
from introducing short circuits was confusing the DCC signals so much my small locomotives
wouldn't run, stops, jerks, all sorts of odd behaviour.
A snubber, quench, or whatever you may want to call it was added to reduce the spikes. This
had things running, but not at all well. Frequently the various small locomotives would stall
on the interface track joint between the normal track circuit and the switched frog sections.
In addition there were some odd stalls for which I could find no logical reason. On one stall
at one of these interfaces the locomotive went 'dead', knowing stalls can blow an address off
a locomotive decoder I re-addressed and it worked again !
The questions I know some will ask - What decoders were involved, and what DCC system I use.
The answer is various - Decoders from Hornby; Zimo; Lenz, Bachmann. Control systems from
Digitrax, Hornby, Gaugemaster. The decoder that had it's address corrupted was a Zimo
Locomotives, well too many to list.
The assortment of locomotives were often taken to my shunting layout because there were times when
I though they must be at fault. However each time on the other layout they behaved perfectly.
Obviously until the micro-switches are wired in and the frog juicers removed some doubts will remain
as to why the Green Frog Brewery layout is such a dog. I can see no other logical reason as my HS-2
and this are exactly the same layout although in reverse, one right handed, the other left handed.
HS2 has always been used with mechanical frog switching !!
Fingers crossed until the final proof testing !!
