Last night I was running my train just fine, all of a sudden I lost control, it was going but I could not stop it. So I uplugged it from the wall.
When I plugged it back in and my loco was dead. I took out the decoder and tested it on a DC track and the loco worked fine.
I had a MRC 1650 HO decoder in this loco, (what concerned me about this decoder is that it has no protective plastic casing around it’s curcuitry and looked like if it touched the wrong thing it would or could short out, I don’t know if this is true?)
What causes a decoder to just die?
Do decoders just die every once and awhile?
Should I buy a Digitrax decoder? if so what do you recommened?
I do not want a sound decoder, but I do want on that is reliable.
Your problem is that you used an MRC decoder. They symptoms you describe are typical of what will happen when an MRC decoder gets ‘frisky’.
In terms of that to replace it with, anything Digitrax, NCE or the like will work just fine. For Digitrax, a DH123 or DZ123 will work just fine. They are the bread and butter decoders.
In the future, I would recommend against purchasing any decoder branded with MRC.
I was reading somewhere that it’s also a good idea to re-program all your decoders once in awhile. (Once every year.) I don’t know why it was mentioned and briefly at that, but would assume that once in awhile a binary bit or bite will go corrupt and by reprogramming the decoder it sees the fault and will put the information somewhere else. Just like a PC that gets a corrupt file on ocassion…chuck