What a bummer having breakage and mechanical problems right out of the box. But on no account would I take off the shell; I learned to my cost that Vision line engines have much more complicated innards than standard Legacy models and there's no point voiding the warranty when these are really issues for factory repairs. Better to be safe than sorrier.
Some K-line engines had motorized roof fans and they were quite noisy due to having a strange plastic belt and pulley system to run them. The Lionel unit looks to be all gears in which case I'd imagine that one of them is not aligned or lubricated properly. I'd leave it up to one of Lionel's techies to deal with this. The service turn-around time is really fast although they might not have all the spare parts on hand just yet.
