Love the pdf and very helpful, I had not seen that. I had not pulled this loco apart prior to this issue but your list of possible "what if" issues illustrates how my assumption of a single cause board failure has a good chance of being too simple. You are right, I was dated on the RF and bluetooth and did not realize how the universal remote integrated those communication methods.
considering the fact that I did verify I am out of the warranty period, I have two choices / steps it appears:
1) Pray for a lucky break, blow $32 and get a new BT board- see if that fixes it.
2) If the BT board does not fix it, get an RA and send it back to Lionel. It is better to let them blow the $120 board and they probably have some diagnostics equipment anyway to avoid this.
