I have an Atlas N Scale BNSF SC60M with a Lenz Decoder. Not sure how old it is, but just bought it and it has a plastic grinding noise sound sound when running. I have oiled most of the moving parts that are accessible with no effect. The noise is not evident at very slow speeds and realy starts in as the engines picks up speed. I have oiled the gears and still no reductiion. Can anyone give me some ideas?
I don’t know if this scares you or not,but dissassembling these isn’t too complicated.The trick is to not lose any part (there aren’t that many) and remember where they go.Start by rotating the motor to see if it turns freely and is not wobbling due to highly worn bushings…if such is the case another motor is the cure.Then rotate both trucks slowly to see if all gears turn freely and never bind…you may have a split or distorted gear in one truck.Parts likely available from Atlas.Then these may have small driveshafts…see if there isn’t a missing bushing or else.Oiling helps but doesn’t fill in for worn or broken parts.If you do dissassemble it yourself,be careful with the lateral brass contact strips…these are very fragile.
You may want to look this over…It does work.
Seems like a similar issue to the one I’m having… did you ever find a fix?
Here’s my issue…
I have an Atlas Dash 8-40B (Part #48711) with a frame dated 2001. When I run it around the track it makes a sporadic buzzing sound - like gearbox vibrations or something.
It doesn’t do it if it’s pushing against my finger or trying to pull away from my hand.
I thought I isolated the problem to one of the truck gear boxes, but inspected it and aside from a bit of dust in one of the teeth, everything is ship shape.
None of my other locomotives make this sound. It’s really distracting and I’d like to fix it because I really like the locomotive.
Any idea how to isolate and fix this issue?
I’m pretty sure that the OP may have got His fixed by now and moved on. (thread is 6yrs.old)
But after reading Your post, it sounds to Me that You have too much forward/aft movement in Your motor driveline. When under pressure, like Your finger the driveline tightens up and noise goes away…when pressure is removed motor driveline relaxe’s and then there is some slop in it creating the noise. Very similar to the link that BRAKIE linked to above Your post. Take a look at that link and read it through and see if You have the skills required to fix it. Look at Your engine and see if there is excess forward/aft movement in drive line especially around the worm gears…You may be able to put spacer washers in them to reduce slack, just not too tight!
Good Luck! [:D]
Frank
Thanks, I’ll take a look. Also found this article about Atlas drivetrain enhancements to address noisy operation. http://trainweb.org/passengercars/Bearingblock.pdf
Of course, since the loco is over 6 years old I guess it’d make sense that a 6 year old post came up in the search results. I guess if people don’t want to see replies to old posts MR should lock them or delete them (which would diminish the utility of knowledge-base type forums like this one). 
What would really be nice in viewing an older thread, which does not bother Me in the least…would be to have some type of closure, as to what become of the problem? Was it fixed and so forth. It appears that some of the threads started by people, they get the needed info/fix and You never find out what happened…they don’t reply again. Good Luck, with Your problem, but I am in HO scale, but the drive lines are just smaller in size for N.
Take Care! [:D]
Frank