It's a long story so sorry for the long post.
If you don't want to hear a tail of woe, stop right here.
The DCC gods have not smiled on me lately.
Started with my 6 Athearn Genesis GP9 sound locos, problem is intermittent power pickup.
The cause might be loose wires but I'm not so sure.
These locos are all from the same time frame, about 5 years ago, and seem to all have the same problem.
What happens is they will lose power on turnouts and sometimes on turns but not all that often.
A GP9 8 wheel pickup should not do this ever.
After I bought these I read something on Tony's Train Exchange about a problem with the drive axle lengths causing intermittent power
The fix was to replace the wheels with some from Northwest Short Lines.
Well one by one they all keep getting worse and now all 6 are dead, won't run worth a darn.
I too POed about this to even look at them much less repair them.
What makes me think that the wheels are the problem is if I lift one set of drivers off the track the other will power the sound
until I wiggle the loco and than it looses power, wiggle it more and power comes back.
I did take the shell off of one and found all the wiring is black, no color coding at all and
I can't see any way to take the bottom cover off the trucks to remove them to get at the wiring on that end.
The way I feel about them right now is if I try to fix them they will on doubt see the business end of an 8 pound hammer.
I have a fairly long fuse but when it hits the dynamite out comes the 8 pounder.
It's happened before. The more expensive the item the longer the fuse and with these it's getting close.
So unless I can find someone to repair them they are dead and gathering dust on the bad order track.
I might just give them away to anyone here that wants them, I want them running or out of the house.
If anyone is interested what I'll do is send you all 6 locos and if I can get two back in good running order you can keep the other 4
and I'll pay shipping both ways and a good amount for your labor and parts.
It's over $1,200.00 worth of junk as it is so I'm willing to pay a fair price to get something running.
I'm not looking for something for nothing but someone to fix the darn things.
I have the right wheels to repair one loco.
The wiring will need to be hard wired as well, this is the part I don't think I can do,
my soldering skills on small wires is non existent. I'll screw it up for sure.
It's 2 Southern Pacific in bloody noise and 4 Black Widows.
But wait there is more.
About three weeks ago one of my Bachmann F7Bs fried the decoder.
Haven't sent it in to Bachmann yet but maybe I will soon if I don't give up on this whole thing first.
So it's on the BO track with the 6 GP9s.
Still more.
Just after the F7 died my Bachmann GE 70 ton switcher died as well. It's on the BO track with 6 Athearn and 1 Bachmann.
More yet.
Went to hook up my little used Digitrax 402D radio throttle, Yep dead as well.
Can't do anything with it as far as running locos is concerned.
Won't fit on the BO track so it's on the work bench.
This is the one and only problem I've had with my Digitrax system.
I'm not done yet.
I needed to have something for yard switching and short line work,
that's what the now dead GP9 were for, so I ordered an Atlas Gold RS11 with Loc sound decoder from Yankee Dabbler.
From what I've heard a good dealer.
It arrived today. Fast shipping, good price and well packaged, I was happy.
Looked everything over very carefully and all was good, brand new in box as stated.
After a quick read of the manual I put it on the tracks and it sounded great and ran good as well. FOR ABOUT 150 FEET.
It died on the third lap.
The start up sequence is just fine, lights work but as soon as you put it into run 1 it dies. Nothing, no lights, no sounds and no runs.
Three decoder resets had no affect. DEAD.
I bought this off E Bay but I'm going to call Yankee Dabbler tomorrow and see what is up. Don't want to deal with E Bay unless I have to.
I do not believe that this is in anyway Yankee Dabbler's fault, I just want to check in with them to see how to proceed with this.
It might be as simple as a loose wire but I don't want to open it up and void the warranty.
I have no idea why I'm loosing decoders, I've checked the track etc. and can see no problems at all.
I have an even 14.8 volts around the entire layout, I've checked every inch with a RRamp meter.
0.04 amps with no trains running. That's what it takes to run the meter.
My track work is good enough that I'm not getting any derails or things like that to cause shorts so I don't think that is the problem.
I'm really getting discouraged and don't know if I'll continue or not.
I closed the door to the train barn and don't know if I'll open it again except to tear down the layout. I'm that discussed, at least I am tonight.
There's even more.
Just to put frosting on the cake the DCC in my washing machine is acting up and didn't want to wash cloths this morning.
Magic
If you don't want to hear a tail of woe, stop right here.
The DCC gods have not smiled on me lately.
Started with my 6 Athearn Genesis GP9 sound locos, problem is intermittent power pickup.
The cause might be loose wires but I'm not so sure.
These locos are all from the same time frame, about 5 years ago, and seem to all have the same problem.
What happens is they will lose power on turnouts and sometimes on turns but not all that often.
A GP9 8 wheel pickup should not do this ever.
After I bought these I read something on Tony's Train Exchange about a problem with the drive axle lengths causing intermittent power
The fix was to replace the wheels with some from Northwest Short Lines.
Well one by one they all keep getting worse and now all 6 are dead, won't run worth a darn.
I too POed about this to even look at them much less repair them.
What makes me think that the wheels are the problem is if I lift one set of drivers off the track the other will power the sound
until I wiggle the loco and than it looses power, wiggle it more and power comes back.
I did take the shell off of one and found all the wiring is black, no color coding at all and
I can't see any way to take the bottom cover off the trucks to remove them to get at the wiring on that end.
The way I feel about them right now is if I try to fix them they will on doubt see the business end of an 8 pound hammer.
I have a fairly long fuse but when it hits the dynamite out comes the 8 pounder.
It's happened before. The more expensive the item the longer the fuse and with these it's getting close.
So unless I can find someone to repair them they are dead and gathering dust on the bad order track.
I might just give them away to anyone here that wants them, I want them running or out of the house.
If anyone is interested what I'll do is send you all 6 locos and if I can get two back in good running order you can keep the other 4
and I'll pay shipping both ways and a good amount for your labor and parts.
It's over $1,200.00 worth of junk as it is so I'm willing to pay a fair price to get something running.
I'm not looking for something for nothing but someone to fix the darn things.
I have the right wheels to repair one loco.
The wiring will need to be hard wired as well, this is the part I don't think I can do,
my soldering skills on small wires is non existent. I'll screw it up for sure.
It's 2 Southern Pacific in bloody noise and 4 Black Widows.
But wait there is more.
About three weeks ago one of my Bachmann F7Bs fried the decoder.
Haven't sent it in to Bachmann yet but maybe I will soon if I don't give up on this whole thing first.
So it's on the BO track with the 6 GP9s.
Still more.
Just after the F7 died my Bachmann GE 70 ton switcher died as well. It's on the BO track with 6 Athearn and 1 Bachmann.
More yet.
Went to hook up my little used Digitrax 402D radio throttle, Yep dead as well.
Can't do anything with it as far as running locos is concerned.
Won't fit on the BO track so it's on the work bench.
This is the one and only problem I've had with my Digitrax system.
I'm not done yet.
I needed to have something for yard switching and short line work,
that's what the now dead GP9 were for, so I ordered an Atlas Gold RS11 with Loc sound decoder from Yankee Dabbler.
From what I've heard a good dealer.
It arrived today. Fast shipping, good price and well packaged, I was happy.
Looked everything over very carefully and all was good, brand new in box as stated.
After a quick read of the manual I put it on the tracks and it sounded great and ran good as well. FOR ABOUT 150 FEET.
It died on the third lap.
The start up sequence is just fine, lights work but as soon as you put it into run 1 it dies. Nothing, no lights, no sounds and no runs.
Three decoder resets had no affect. DEAD.
I bought this off E Bay but I'm going to call Yankee Dabbler tomorrow and see what is up. Don't want to deal with E Bay unless I have to.
I do not believe that this is in anyway Yankee Dabbler's fault, I just want to check in with them to see how to proceed with this.
It might be as simple as a loose wire but I don't want to open it up and void the warranty.
I have no idea why I'm loosing decoders, I've checked the track etc. and can see no problems at all.
I have an even 14.8 volts around the entire layout, I've checked every inch with a RRamp meter.
0.04 amps with no trains running. That's what it takes to run the meter.
My track work is good enough that I'm not getting any derails or things like that to cause shorts so I don't think that is the problem.
I'm really getting discouraged and don't know if I'll continue or not.
I closed the door to the train barn and don't know if I'll open it again except to tear down the layout. I'm that discussed, at least I am tonight.
There's even more.
Just to put frosting on the cake the DCC in my washing machine is acting up and didn't want to wash cloths this morning.
Magic