I have a pair of F-40-PH in Amtrack and they are beautiful looking engines but they are the worst running engines I have in Kato. The lights flicker constantly and the wheels get dirty in just a couple of feet of running and my track is sparkling clean. I was just wondering if anyone else is having the same problems with theirs? I guess looks come with faults and this is a big one in my opinion.
Well, heres to your first reply. I have had this problem before, except it was a lot worse of brand then Kato. I never did find out how to repair these engines. Maybe a bad engine or two is made every once and a while?! Good luck!
Oh yea, [#welcome] to the forums! Hope we can answer your questions, even if we can’t answer this one!
No problems with mine.
I have two but haven’t run them much yet. I’ve been holding out for the Digitrax sound decoders. These do seem a little noisier than my other Katos, but they’ve not had a chance to break in, either.
I’m not sure what to tell you about the dirty wheels. I have a couple engines like that, too, that seem to be crud magnets even though others do not have the problem.
One of my Athearn BB engines had this problem and I had already converted to NWSL wheels, so I was puzzled. I ended up curing it by taking the wheels off the locomotive and chucking each one in my Dremel, then polishing them with metal polish. I haven’t tried this with a Kato.
I had a problem with the one I bought. Two of the DCC socket pins were soldered together and I suffered a blown decoder before I found the problem. Once fixed it now runs fine. Also installed a DSX sound decoder with a 28mm speaker that fitted like a glove into the speaker socket - the sound is pretty good. 
Tim
I am not sure if this will help, but Labelle 101 is an electrical conductive oil. In other words, if you put some on the tracks it may not only help keep your wheels clean but it will help your engines run better.
I have used it for years and I have some engines that seem to dirty up quicker than others, but by using this method, I don’t have to clean wheels and track for a long time.
Run about a foot of the oil directly on you tracks, both sides, stratigically around the layout. Then run trains, as the train hits the oil on the tracks it spreads the oil around the layout keeping good electrical contact with your engines. I doesn’t clean the wheels per say, but it helps. It is the improved electrical conduction that is really helping. By spreading the oil around the layout it will leave a residual on the tracks for a long time.
I have used other products and this may have been mentioned, take a piece of cloth soaked in the Orange Glow (Goo Gone), place it one the tracks and rest the front trucks on the cloth (t-shirt) with Orange Glow, and the back set of trucks on the tracks, hold the engine and turn on the power a let the wheels turn on the cloth. Then reverse the engine and do the same with the other set of wheels. This really cleans the wheels.
I don’t recommend the Kadee wheel brush cleaner, although many use it, it removes the nickle silver from the wheels over time and this will effect the conductivity of the wheels.
By the way the Labelle 101 will also help clean your rolling stock wheels a little bit over time.
WTRR
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