I was running my Atlas Genset, and something shorted out. I walked over and fixed it. It ran for eight more feet and then stopped. Lights stayed on, but wouldn’t move, even after nudging it a little.
No smoke at all, but it has a really weird odor. I looked it over and couldn’t find anything abnormal.
It is less than a month old and I’ve had no problems before now.
I waited almost a year and a half for this, and would be really upset if it’s dead for good (cause I don’t have the money for another…).
Were you running it on DC or DCC? If it has a DCC decoder in it, a burning smell is not good news. If it has no decoder there should be some evidence of burned wire that was causing the weird odor.
Try resetting the decoder to factory default values if it has one and see if it will run on address 3.
Initial investigations have uncovered an incompatibility problem between the new Atlas HO Genset Locomotive and certain control systems which could result in circuit board burn out.
How long were you running it on a DCC system using 00? Not the best thing for a DC loco to do. More then likely the motor over heated and possibly shut down. Hopefully there is no permanent damage. Atlas may warranty it for you. Decoders are cheap enough where there should not be any 00 operation. One guy in our club refused to buy decoders for his locos. He went right along running 00 on our Lenz system until he burnt out 4 motors. All the while buying other things besides decoders. Now he has over sixty freight cars and no locos to pull them. He just didn’t believe anyone that a loco with a decoder can run on a DC powered layout also.
Jack, that’s it. When the problems with the Tech 6 were found Atlas sent out an email reporting that, but it didn’t affect me since I don’t have a Tech 6. However, once they found the same thing with DCC systems, they never sent out another email telling people this, so many people (myself included) did not know that second part. I tried searching the Atlas site and couldn’t find anything, but I never thought of checking their forums.
Pete, I was running it for about 30 seconds on the DCC system. For the past two weeks, I’ve been running it on a DC pack, but decided to try it on the DCC system, not knowing of the damage to the circut board.
And I’m definately getting decoders for all my locomotives, once I get the money (considering I’ll need to finish tracklaying and get a new DCC system before investing in decoders…)
Posted - 09/30/2010 : 16:31:00 
