@Michael bee posted:I would say possibly there’s a part failure but for two engines to work or act the same exact way I’m not sure. I flip the switch to run as opposed to program and I throttled up just a little bit so the signal would be sent from the engine to the transformer that it’s in conventional mode but as soon as it gets up enough juice it just goes forward . I’m going over to my buddies house who has a dedicate a Layout with an old ZW to see if there’s any difference . thank you everybody for chiming in and trying to help
Will keep everybody up-to-date
AFAIK, it's just the opposite. A CC engine is programmed to automatically start in conventional mode until and unless it sees a CC ("watchdog") signal. There is no specific signal to start in conventional. That's why one generally fires up the Legacy/TMCC base and put the remote on before turning on track power so the engine doesn't start in conventional if you're running it in CC.