FWIW, not bad mouthing MTH but I have seen issues with this new Big Boy I have not seen with any other of my engines, I have almost 300 engines of PS2 and 3 so when they all work fine on the same layout but this new Big Boy will not work correctly, it's the new Big Boy engine.
My two cents is the board for the reciever is not as strong as the prior PS3 were and this makes it have issues that the other PS3 engines don't have. It just doesn't have the signal strength so you have to have better grounds and connections to make it work. If you have solid 10's then you will not see an issue, but even a signal strength of a 9 will make the engine not receive commands. I even lashed up another PS3 steam engine to the new Big Boy, didn't couple them together and ran them on the same track behind each other. The other PS3 responded to every command issued where the new Big Boy sometimes did and sometimes didn't. So I could slow down the old PS3 steam engine while the new Big Boy stayed at the same speed it was at prior to me issues a speed command to slow down. So real world proof is it's an issue with the new Big Boy engine.
For this thread I agree it's most likely that 2/3 switch. We all know those switches are just bad and fail all the time.
So far I have had to replace the marker lights, bad wireless draw bar, make better connections in the tender for all grounds and fix the tender trailing truck the factory forgot to tighten the screws as it fell apart. It now works better but still not to the the level of my other 100 plus PS3 engines I have.
Work on the grounds and anything that will make the signal strength better will improve this engine. I agree with you, you should not have to work on a new engine to make it work on a normal layout. Especially when all your other engines work fine.
