Let's do a simple diagnostic. Put the locomotive only on the tracks and power it up. Take your digital camera or your cellphone, using the viewfinder, look directly at the locomotive drawbar IR transmitter LED. You should see a purple glow that indicates that serial data is being transmitted. If so, the serial data is getting out.
My chief concern is you seem to have multiple issues.
- No sound control. sometimes, other times it seems you have sound control.
- Smoke unit element error
- Locomotive ID Programming issues
With these kinds of symptoms with an MTH locomotive, I usually slap the board on my test set and verify the board functions. Now that I've finally completed my RCMC tester, that would be my first move here as well. I realize that doesn't work for you locally since you don't have a test set.
Have you looked inside? It's possible that a connector is loose or a wire got pinched during factory assembly, I've seen it quite a few times.
