Hard to say what is going on here,
( raising it to 17-18V, the loco clicked, the lights came on, but did not make any sounds. )
Well if that is the case, this engine upgrade must have the lights working off of track power instead of the PS2 board and they can't be controlled by the remote.
I would try to run the engine in conventional mode for a while as Engineer Joe says and see if it runs. If so, let it run for a while before trying it in DCS. Sometimes the pickup rollers or track gets a film on it causing the DCS signal to be low making it hard to load an rngine into the remote . You can try scothbrite on the track to clean it also. If it was mine I would upgrade the TIU and remote to 6.10. You could also try a different channel on tyour TIU. Make sure all wire connections are tight.
Good Luck