I have two Life-Like Berkshires with sound and DCC installed in them. One engine began stalling and jerking so I rolled it over in a repair cradle and saw bare wires running under the cab back to the tender. The insulation appears to be melted. I then checked the second one and found the same condition. I have 11 other sound and DCC steamers and these are the only two that show this damage. Has anyone else out there had this same problem? Looks like a short has occurred some where.
Thanks,
so far no, I have 2 berks, one sound. But they dont have a lot of run time yet.
replace the melted wire with a heavier duty wire, if its the motor wire it may use more current and the wire cant take it.
Poor quality wire would be my guess. It couldn’t hurt to also make sure things are wired to what they’re supposed to be, i.e. no shorts in the loco.
Wikious is doubtlessly correct.
I don’t want to slag the good people in the PRC because it would be a useless and wrong generalization that the vast majority don’t deserve (just like ourselves [;)] . However a consumer advocate programme on CBC mentioned that there is an alarming number of sub-standard product coming from China these days. One of the chief complaints, and warnings, was about electrical wire that didn’t measure up. They constituted a rather severe fire hazard because their quality was poor and the purported gauge was smaller than advertized. If the factory that assembled your engine has purchased this stuff because they got a good price for it…
I suppose other answers might have as much validity to them. For example, the motors could be sub-standard (and run well enough but) draw a much heavier current than the decoders are rated for.
I’ve had one for about a year and no problems but I think I’ll check it. I really haven’t run it a lot.
I had the exact same fried wiring problem with the two first-run LL Berkshires I bought. Between that and the lousy-looking drivers on that batch, I pretty much gave up on them and put them on the shelf for two years and ignored them after that.
Last year I decided to do something about them and ordered replacement drivers from Oregon Rail Services, and while I had them apart, I replaced the wiring between the loco and the tender with two pairs of Miniatronics plugs. It was a lot of work, but at least now they’re runnable.
Luckily, I don’t need that many Berkshires for the way I want to run. Mikados, on the other hand…
We gave our grandson a P2K Berkshire with sound for Christmas 2007. It has seen a lot of running time since then and given us no problems.
I looked at the wire connections between the loco and tender, just now, and everything looks okay. While the wires are very thin and flexible they show no signs of heat damage. I hope things stay that way.