not have deliberate dead spots any longer. How do the two
        
        
          approaches compare in price? To answer this question, let’s
        
        
          look at a real-life example on my own layout.
        
        
          On my HO Siskiyou Line, I have a dozen or so LifeLike Proto
        
        
          2000 SD9s. These locos have great detail and proportions, but
        
        
          as the models age, they develop power pickup problems.
        
        
          While the power truck design looks a lot like Kato’s with the
        
        
          axle tips riding in a metal plate just behind the truck side-
        
        
          frame, there is one significant difference. Kato uses a drilled
        
        
          phosphor-bronze plate, while LifeLike uses a stamped soft
        
        
          copper plate.
        
        
          The LifeLike copper plate is a lot softer metal and it’s thinner
        
        
          than the harder Kato phosphor-bronze plate. By stamping the
        
        
          axle-tip holes in the soft copper plate, the axle holes actually
        
        
          have jagged “splayed” metal around the axle-tip holes, which
        
        
          gather dirt and lint, making axle-tip contact less reliable.
        
        
          As the loco ages, these soft copper plate axle holes wear
        
        
          larger, to the point a loco can easily stall because none of the
        
        
          axle tips are contacting the plate on a given rail!
        
        
          I’ve installed sound in a few locos as well, and they always
        
        
          cut out at my dead frogs. If the power pickup is working okay,
        
        
          my locos generally run fine across the dead frogs, but the
        
        
          sound decoders seem more sensitive to the dead spot such
        
        
          that they cut out consistently at turnout frogs, which is very
        
        
          annoying. For the SD9s with iffy power pickup anyway, hav-
        
        
          ing dead spots anywhere in the track is just asking for more
        
        
          instances of stalling – and that’s exactly what happens.
        
        
          My layout has 120 turnouts on it. Frog juicers come six per
        
        
          board for $80, and I’ll need 20 boards to power all the frogs
        
        
          on my layout, which is a $1600 investment.
        
        
          But if I look at keep-alive instead, I have 65 locos. Not all of
        
        
          them will need keep alive in them, but let’s say 75% of them
        
        
          do, which is 49 locos.  I can add a TCS KA-2 keep-alive module
        
        
          Publisher’s Musings - 3
        
        
        
        
          MRH-Dec 2014