Do decoders have a shelf and operational life

I wouldn't call it a shelf life, this implies that if you don't use it it will just die and be useless. All electronic components have tolerances and they all break down from time to time, your TV, other electrical appliances in your house etc, decoders are no different, some may take a small surge while another will not, this goes for the same brand as well as different brands, In use the components will get warm while another component may get hot, and heat is a big problem to electrical components, but summing up, decoders are the same as any electronic components, we in the model rail hobby use them a lot and that is why when things go wrong we tend to notice it a bit more than if the toaster failed or some other appliance.

I believe that some decoders

I believe that some decoders are less tolerant to power surges etc that can cause them to fail.   Bachmann factory equiped decoders come to mind.  I only use Digitrax decoders and have never replaced a faulty one in my 12 years in the hobby.   My layout is surge protected as well. 

Its more operational life I

Its more operational life I am talking about rather than shelf life.  This club is reported to have roughly 150 engines on it at any given times, obviously many holed up in yards etc.

Its more operational life ,rather than shelf life?

Well all things model railroad related have a practical lifespan. Either because they wear out or just because technology makes them functionally or visually obsolete. I'd guess older decoders might have some parts in them that deteriorate over time but I'm not concerned about it as most get replaced by better versions over time anyway.I'd rather have my decoders wearing out than my wheels getting grooves  or my gears cracking..DaveBranum  

More like advances in technology.

I can not believe there are older decoders just blowing up or just failing for just being old. I think if we dig a little more into decoders not functioning any further you will find that there is nothing wrong with the decoder at all. When my club upgraded the Lenz system it enabled Railcom by default and all of a sudden most of the NCE and some of the early Soundtrax decoders quit working at the club. Disabling Railcom solved that problem. I have some decoders that are over 10 years old and still going strong.

 Failures from outside sources is another issue entirely. How many times has your decoder been scrambled by a short from running a switch? How many times can the decoder be subjected to that before it fails? I believe that ninety nine percent of decoder failures are self inflicted.

           Pete

decoders serving well

Other than one decoder I smoked when I shorted it DURING an improper install over 10 years ago, I've had no trouble with decoders just wearing out.  Have used mostly digitrax for over 15 years, and I am quite pleased with them and the system.  All momentary mysteries are cleared up within a few minutes, and there are far fewer running problems than with DC & blocks.

Lies, D***ed Lies and Statistics

Electronic parts aren't like milk and Twinkies with a use by date that you know marks the day they go bad. What you get in the data sheets are graphs of failure probability. These are usually bell curves like this:

This shows the failure rate for what ever this is is pretty low for 80,000 hours but bumps up appreciably at 100,000. So you'd expect this part to be trouble free for 10 years at least. Trouble is, something like a decoder has a couple of dozen parts, and the probabilities of anything failing add up. So failures happen all the way down to 0 hours. A large club will probably begin noticing failures sooner than a single user just because you are aware of many units.

This particular graph is for an ideal situation-- if you run capacitors at 100° C their life is derated to 8000 hours. An enclosed box with a hard working motor and transistors switiching an amp is likely to be pretty warm. Maybe we should be putting fans in our locos.

pqe