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URGENT HELP NEEDED!!!???


DMU mad

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Dear DMU Mad,

Hi, are the points laid flat? If not a four wheeled loco is likely to loose contact and hence power. Are all the wheels clean and the track top clean? Do all four pick ups work correctly - you can test this by applying power to the

wheels directly from your controller output. Is the loco chassis square & flat so all four wheels are in 'contact' with the track? If all the above are OK it may be the point electrical contacts are not working properly - you can test this with a multi-meter

or touch light bulb & battery. If the contacts are working OK it will be the loco wheels shorting the circuit as it travels over the turnout 'V'. This will require some different wiring so a short circuit is not created as the metal wheels cross the dead frog

'V'. A simple two way switch will be OK with some isolating sections and there is lots of info about this on previous posts and other sites - but if you get this far just ask again - it's easy to show you than write it down!

I hope the above helps you

solve this problem. Be systematic and start with the easy issues.

Hope your layout & running works fine. Have fun. Regards,
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I have a slightly different take on this problem. I have 2 Collector 0-4-0s and 2 mixed freight 0-6-0s. Only one of them works properly over points. The others have intermittent or more persistent problems and for at least two, it depends what side the

frog is on whether it plays up. But as far as I can see and test, it's not a pickup problem, rather the chassis is not square and consequently only 3 wheels of one 0-4-0 are on the track. If the only touching wheel on that side goes over a frog, the loco stops.

The

solution to all these types of problems - Stay Alive decoders in my opinion (only theoretical, haven't tried them so far). A recent post labelled Stay Alive gave this site link - http://www.dccconcepts.com/index_files/DCCconcepts_Locomotive_decoders.htm
These

people seems to know what they are talking about. Have a look at their points solution too. They have a similar taketo Southernman777 above.
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Meant to say we have several places over here that do them. Decoders with a capacitor to do stay alive are usually vastly overpriced to the normal decoders and all for a capacitor costing pennies.

You could go down the live frog route DMU Mad, a

rival maker does live frog pointwork, but beware a lot of older locos made before 1998-1999 won't run well on the rivals track.
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Actually a capacitor plus a prallel combination of current limiting resistor and diode in series with it. It is connected across the output of the bridge rectifier which is the first thing to follow the red/black pickup wires in the decoder, so needs soldering

onto the decoder chip. More info is at http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/mainnorth/alive.htm and the link in my post 3 above (found all of this via this link posted by someone on a separate thread).
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