Phil,
if anyone can fix your engine it would be Alex M.
Trust me. My post on the 3rail forum “The New York Central and Alex M to the rescue “ just touches on the amount of work he’s done for me. With never a comeback.
i sent a station sounds car back to Lionel because it stopped working. The lights worked but no sound. After they sent it back to me it went back in the box with the set. I finally took it out of the box after a few years as I don’t have a regular layout. So I took it out to run around my Christmas tree and guess what? It didn’t work. This time the lights didn’t work or the sound. Not just the sounds as before. I took it to Alex he opened it up in front of me. In about 15 minutes he found that it was wired incorrectly from the factory. Lionel didn’t catch it or didn’t want to be bothered rewiring the hole car. Knowing the boards probably aren’t available anymore for this particular car, he rewired the boards with confidence and now it works perfectly.
This is just one of many things he’s done from me over the years. Use him you won’t be disappointed.
Alex,
The dealers don’t have the time or the talent to actually repair the engines except maybe a smoke unit repair. Trust me I know. As you know, I owned a store in New Jersey year’s ago, and when I saw something that needed too much work I would tell the customer either I could send it back to Lionel or they could. I didn’t have the time to try and figure it out. Back then Lionel did out of warranty repair.
Mike R
