I think we are back to the drawing board on this one. I checked the features on the MTH website for the BNSF, Union Pacific, and CSX ES44AC's that I have. First of all, the BNSF, again my fault for not looking closely, is a 2015 version. 20-20511-1. But, big but here, the features say that it too is a PS3-2 just like the problem child Union Pacific one that is a 2017. 20-20736-1. The CSX is a 2017 Imperial class, pardon the Star Trek jargon, or Railking baby version that says nothing about PS3-2 in the features. Baby version means it's not scale length and is designed to run on 031 curves where Premiers would throw everything out of whack if you tried that.
My point is that the 2015 navigates the switch without so much as a burp, twitch or wink. My RJ Corman is an SD40-2 built just last year with the PS3-2 rail conversion capability, and I told you what happened there. It passed over a back to back switch set up, stopped, shut down, and no sooner had the engine sounds gone quiet, it woke up, restarted in "wildcat" mode, started spewing smoke again, and just sat there. UP shuts down and goes quiet and never starts again unless I move it by hand and restart it. The DDA40X is a 2016 re-do of the 1998 PS2 version. I have no idea if it is PS3-2 because the features tab in the website brings nothing to the screen to read. Best I can do is the Description. My guess, since the BNSF is a 16 and has it, so does the DD.
I thought we might be on to something until I discovered the engine that has no issue with the switch has the "marker" in its DNA that makes both of my Union Pacific engines stall and die at 5 miles per hour. So here is what I have decided to do to fix this. For every reader of this thread who has inwardly or outwardly just said to themselves, "oh for heavens sakes just run the darn things faster and be done with it." That's what I am going to do. Thanks for all the assistance and the advice, you've been wonderful and I appreciate it. But on the matter of the black hole, case closed.
John
