DCC Disaster Averted

Having fitted DCC decoders and sound chips to three locos and not encountered any problems I may have been getting a little smug about this DCC lark. However, on the last test run outside disaster appeared to strike 33052 Ashford, when it inexplicably stopped. The sound chip was still burbling away but no motor response. After taking her apart and having a little fiddle on the DCC programming track using the trusty SPROG I decided that I'd blown the chip. The functions appeared to work, and the wires to and from the pick ups and motor were all intact, and the motor ran fine on DC so a blown decoder was reasonable assumption. So £29.95 for a new Lenz LE1035 1.8 Amp decoder was spent, and I consider myself lucky I actually found one still available. Anyway, it came without a plug so I decided before doing a bunch more soldering I'd give the old decoder one last try. Having removed and retested it, lo and behold the problem was actually with the spring and brush in the Lima motor after all - when testing the motor on DCC I'd been pushing on the spring and it had been making contact, but not when left alone. Once the motor was cleaned up and spring stretched all is well. Moral of the story? Don't always assume it's the DCC decoder thats at fault just because it's the bit that's hardest to understand...