Thursday 22 November 2007

The Trouble with Insulated Frogs...

Sounds like a great song title...

Anyway, Since upgrading to DCC, I've got a minor problem with my Class 08 shunters going at slow speed over some points. The insulated section at the join of the rails (go google if you want to know more, or start here) causes a rather jumpy motion for the loco as it looses power.

There are several resolutions to this. The one I've decided to try is implementing the Lenz USP feature - Uninterruptable Signal Processing. This involves upgrading the decoder from a "Silver" to a "Gold" and adding the optional "Power1" module.

As far as I can see from the photo, it's just an electrolytic capacitor and probably a diode or two on a circuit board. The idea being, that the capacitor stores a charge to power the loco and decoder during brief (sub 1 second) power interruptions (dirty track or insulated frogs) and keeps everything running smoothly.

I've found very few retailers stocking Power1. I've eventually bought one from eBay.

Having taken apart one of my Hornby Class 08s and looking at the dimensions of Power1 from the manual, it'll be a very very tight squeeze indeed. Watch this space to see my progress of the next week or so. I want to see if I can get a Power1 to fit in the chassis before I splash out £25 or so on a Gold decoder!

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