Yay! Thank you everyone for your help, Cole and I are having a blast! All good, having lots of fun with the SP and it is running great, its all "loosened" up now. I know that Harry Henning is really good with these, he straightened out 3 of the 18000 series engines and they now certainly "Pullmor" wow, seriously its ridiculous what they can do.
Now, on to the backstop.....yikes! By the way for $119 plus shipping there is a newer board replacement that makes this work perfectly according to Lionel has anyone tried this?