VE6AB Technical
Frog Juicer
The issues you can run in to as I did once my HO DCC switching layout was operational.
TV
While operating a locomotive, and when going through a turnout at scale speeds (creeping), on occasion while one end of the locomotive (truck assembly) was on the frog, power would be momentarily lost causing the sound to go dead, requiring that I restart the locomotive with the controller giving me the sound back.
Now I have to tell you this proved to be quite annoying to say the least. After various attempts at fixing the problem, and improving the situation through installing extra feed points close to the turnout, the problem still persisted.
Realizing that I needed to power the frogs to solve the problem, it would also require a circuit with several switch's for reversing polarity when the locomotive powered through the turnout. While doing an Internet search on the subject, I became aware of a device called a "Frog Juicer" as seen in the photo.
This board is an automatic polarity reverser with outputs for 6 frogs. Setup is simple, connect two wires to the DCC bus (red and black wires) and one wire (green wires) to each frog. When the locomotive crosses the turnout and if the frog is the wrong polarity, the frog juicer will reverse the polarity quickly allowing the locomotive to continue to operate normally without lose of sound as in my case.
The polarity shift happens so quickly (300 microseconds) that the DCC controller does not react by tripping the cuircuit breaker, but continues to operte normally, and more importantly, all the issues with drop outs in the turnouts have been resolved, with the locomotive able to creep through the turnout at the lowest setting on the throttle without losing the sound.
With the problem resolved, its time to get back to playing train engineer!
Expand the photo for a closer look.....
