Will short circuits damage a DCC decoder?

[jagged ben]

I've never suspected that a short circuit on the track did permanent damage to any of my decoders.  And I've suffered  a lot of shorts.  Now, glitching the programming, that's a whole other story as others have said.  But for that matter, I find that if I don't run a loco for several months it's also likely to need a reprogram.

One story to relate: we had some EasyDCC turnout decoders at the club.  They lost their programming every time a loco shorted in the district they were connected to.  It was supreme frustration for a few weeks until we got them switched over to a new power district that we designated for accessory decoders only.  The locos that shorted were usually fine.  So yes, it depends on the decoder.

[peteski]

One story to relate: we had some EasyDCC turnout decoders at the club.  They lost their programming every time a loco shorted in the district they were connected to.  It was supreme frustration for a few weeks until we got them switched over to a new power district that we designated for accessory decoders only.  The locos that shorted were usually fine.  So yes, it depends on the decoder.

I agree.
And also on how high the voltage spikes are.  That will depend on the design of the booster's output circuitry, the amperage it can supply, and on the DCC bus properties (capacitance, inductance, resistance).  All those factors come into play.

[Greg Elmassian]

I run G and Z scales.

I have some locos with kind of, well, nasty motors, mostly old Marklin 3 pole motors in Z scale. Quite often my TCS decoders will not run these locos well, and often the loco goes off into full speed or becomes uncontrollable. I've normally solved this with a decoder reset. So I have seen this erratic behavior, and I either change motors or locos or get a different decoder like a Zimo.

I've only shorted the motor output of a decoder once... I ran the motor so hard (way out of it's limits) that it overheated, and locked the rotor. It sat cooking for a good while and burned up the output section of a G scale decoder. I took that situation as my fault.

Greg

[peteski]

This discussion is about shorts which occur on the track side of the decoder (caused either by the loco itself, or elsewhere on the layout but in the same power district), not shorts on the output side (motor or function outputs) of the decoder.

[Greg Elmassian]

Sorry, you are indeed correct....

Greg