Sorry to hear that; these sets do not deserve shelf ornament status but they were well ahead of their time in terms of operating functions and we all know what that means.
I noticed that your garage layout is all tubular track and that might account for voltage drops as described above. However, if you are getting the same problem on a club layout that may suggest an issue with the engine's onboard components.
I think that the implication of what GRJ says above in his 3rd post is that the smoke controls (on the motherboard) might not be affected by the R2LC (I'm guessing here) but in your position I'd try a swap anyway at some point.
