Six months old, maybe 2 hours running time on it, last time I ran it was about two months ago.
I put it on the track yesterday and not only does it not run, it kills the whole DC block so nothing will run.
How does a supposedly quality locomotive develop a terminal illness when it is sitting idle on an unpowered track? What is the most likely problem? I suspect a short, but my MRC 220 has always reset itself, or at least had the LED fade to black when shorted before.
What gives?
My first guess would be some piece of loose metal, like a track spike or staple, has gotten inside the engine. Next, there might be a loose wire inside. I think a visual inspection with the shell off will likely locate the problem.
Sadly the P2K locos is still suffering QC problems…I have heard of this problem and other problems at the club and I will pass on what I been hearing.
Check the wiring
check the lightboard
Check the DCC plug wiring make sure it not shorting.
Contact Walthers
The problem is the engine and not a spike…A spike will short a engine but,I don’t think so in this case.
In this case, I am quite certain that a detailed inspection will reveal the problem. It is clearly a short, and that must mean foreign matter between polarities somewhere in the model, or it is a broken wire/solder allowing the lead to slide over to another polarity nearby, a single wire strand bridging over to a nearby powered surface of opposite polarity, with the last possibility being frayed insulation.
It’s there, you’ll take only 10 minutes to identify it starting with removing the shell, and maybe both trucks…I’m pretty sure.
Did you disassemble any of the trucks, like mistakenly switch axles around if they have insulated wheels on one side, before you put it away?
I didn’t really put it away. There’s about three times as many trains as we can fit on the layout at any given time, so I took a kitchen cabinet shelf that wasn’t working too hard and nailed six tracks 4.5 feet long onto it for a storage yard. It sits out of the way on a table and is covered with large, man-sized pistol targets to keep the dust off. Locos get rotated on and off the layout as we decide to run them.
With the 5% grade, OT trains run very short, and diesel trains pretty uch have to be MU’ed with a pair or more of diesels to pull the hill.
I got the P2K GP-7 on clearance for $40, and though it’s pretty, it is the slowest locomotive we have, bar none, at any given power setting, and so will not run with anything else.
Last week I found a pair of next to new used GP-7’s, tested well at creep and at speed, sequential road numbers, in lovely Santa Fe black and silver that twisted my arm way up behind my back and demanded a ride home, (for $150 a pair, who could resist?). I was wondering if the black and silver ones would MU with the blue and yellow one, and when I put it on the track, it killed the whole block.
We don’t have any spikes here, except on the trestle, no staples in use, in short there isn’t any metal around for it to pick up, unless some kind of one in a million scenario involving the cats or burglars happened while I was gone. Also, never had the trucks apart, or wheels off, the only disassembly it has seen was when it was new in the box, the way all of them come.
I’ll open him up and see what’s what, and report back when I know more. Beyond loose wires, or burned spots on circuit boards, i’m not really sure what to look for, but if it needs shipped, it will have to come apart to fit in the original box, so there’s nothing to lose.
I don’t think this was mentioned at all… or at least I didn’t see it
If the loco went from a “cold” spot to the layout, there might be just enough condensation on the PCB or between the motor contacts to short it out…
Everything’s in the dining room, temp and humidity controlled, year round. No problems with either condensation or other locos that I’ve ever seen along those lines.
OK, well guess that doesn’t help much then. [sigh]
Guess it’s gotta go to the back shop then…
Well, I “fixed” it, but have no idea how.
Removed the shell, no obvious problems, tested it without the shell, no joy.
Popped the truck covers, no obvious problems, tested it again, no joy.
I removed the axles, found four of four gears split (now there’s a surprise ;-), replaced them “as-is”, re-gauged them, and it works fine.
I’m guessing that somehow spread or contracted axles somehow interrupted or short-circuited the flow of current, but I don’t see how that could happen.
While he’s apart, I’ll replace the junk couplers and axle gears, and check the two new ones for split axles as well, and as near as I can tell, they run close enough in speed to MU all three of them if the need arises.
Though I’m pretty sure Santa Fe used the silver and black for yard and MOW applications, I also doubt they’d leave revenue freight sitting idle with perfectly good diesels, waering the wrong color paint, also sitting idle.
Thanks for all the help, guys, I really appreciate it.
Send a note to Walthers - they will send you a ‘care pkg’ of new axle gears(free). BTW, the black with silver ‘zebra stripe’ paint scheme was the original road switcher paint scheme. They changed to the blue with yellow ‘book-end’ paint scheme in the late 50’s(SD24/DL600B time frame). The older black engines were repainted blue as time passed.
Jim
The split gears were allowing your axles to short out. The axle shafts were in direct contact inside one or more of the split gears.
Jim
That makes sense, electrically, anyway. I can replace them from at least two local hobby shops I know of. The new acquisitions do not have split gears, but I’ll pick up enough replacements just in case.
I replaced the cheap couplers without a lot of problems, and ran them in ok, assuming that it might help and can’t hurt, since I don’t know how much or what kind of running they did before I got them.
Another glitch showed up, the consist runs fine in one direction, but derails frequently in the other, lead truck (long hood end) on the trailing unit. I suspect the previous owner was aware of this, because he went to the trouble of cutting out the window and leaned an engineer on the window sill, to designate the preferred lead unit.
Out of a statistical pool of 4 units, any “conclusions” drawn will be random and unreliable, but since three of the four have now given me headaches, (GP-60 returned the next day due to an un-earthly screech, swapped for an Atlas GP-7), I don’t see any P2K’s on the acquisition list around here for the forseeable future.
I’d rather just run the Atlases than continully fight with all this. With kits, I expect to spend as much time tweaking as necessary, but when something is advertised and priced as ready to run, I expect that to happen. With Atlas, it does.
Thats to bad your luck with P2K loco’s suck. I have a large number of them and have only had a couple issues with cracked gears. Check your coupler height on the loco that derails, it might be catching on something which would explain why it derails only in one direction. I’ve always found that if the box said “Ready To Run” on it no matter what the brand it will still need to be tweeked a little to be reliable.
Here are some things that come to mind:
Hope you figure it out,
Jim
I disagree about Proto engines sucking. I own 13 of them, I do have 3 that have split gears, and I burned the lights out in the one. But other than that I have never had a problem with a proto unit. They are some of the most reliable units I have. I have had problems with atlas units before, But you are right they all need to be tweaked weather it is Kadees or new gears