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Hi All,

I have a "pre-production" MTH Railking 0-8-0 steam engine (30-1255-1) that according to the box which is marked up with sharpie type of magic marker it does not have PS2.0 electronics.

The engine was purchase a year or two ago and it's a great engine, runs great in conventional, smokes great, chuff sounds, etc...

Question is:  I tried running it last night on at a clubhouse which is set up for DCS and the engine just didn't do anything, it didn't start up, didn't run, nothing.  It looked completely dead but when I took it off the DCS enabled line (placed on a test track, with simple Lionel CW-80 power) it ran fine.

So, it runs conventionally fine when no DCS is connected, but when there is DCS connected it's dead in the water.

Ideas?

All my other "conventional" engines ran fine conventionally (Z-4000 power) and completely ignored the DCS, so this seems weird.

Thanks...Rich

p.s.  I did try to "add engine" via the DCS controller, just in case the magic marker notes were wrong, no engine found.

 

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p.s.  I did try to "add engine" via the DCS controller, just in case the magic marker notes were wrong, no engine found.

Did you use a programming track  or equivalent?  It's been my experience over the years that  if the engine being added has the same ID as another engine on the layout  it's not  going to  add  unless using a programming track... The engine should add anyway but....

Does it have a front coil type coupler??   I believe the original ps-1 had thumb tack couplers.

@Barry Broskowitz - Thank you, I'll give that a try tomorrow night as I think I'm heading to the club then.

@Gregg - it does look like it has electrocouplers, which I thought were just non-functional because of it's pre-production sample status.  Thank you for your note.

So, sounds like I need to find out which track at the club might be a programming track.  It also seems like I probably got a PS1 engine for a great deal, nice.

Pictures of the packing foam, and bottom of the engine/tender are below.  I could have sworn it said "no ps1/2" on the foam, but I guess that was just on the invoice or something?  not sure as I don't see that now.

Thanks guys, I'll play with this a bit!

Best...Rich

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Hey John @jhz563 - welcome to the "Rich Murnane is a dummy and bought something he didn't completely understand" party.

I think I was "duped" - bought a cool engine under the premise it was conventional but it was really PS-2 under the covers.  Worse things have happened, but to me it feels like winning a scratch-off lotto ticket.

Below are some pictures of the guts of the tender, and a video.

From above, it looks like the next steps I think would be to:

1. walk through Barry's steps 

2. figure out if the track is a programming track

3. maybe replace that battery?

I also noticed that one side of the speaker looks to be corroding a little bit.  Another "weird" thing was the white stuff next to what looks like a capacitor on top of the board.

Maybe the PS-2 was fried somehow, but this thing normally runs fine conventionally, I've run it tons at home without command.

Thanks again everyone for the help.  I'm clearly a DCS/Command-Control newbie and feel a little bit like a fish out of water with this stuff.

 

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So, here is why I thought the DCS wasn't installed, there was a sticker in the cab that said "No DCS", and the seller said something along the lines of "the pre-production model probably didn't come with it" - something like that!  Image below but kind of hard to see I think.

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It was purchase at a small new/used train and hobby shop in March of '16, didn't it look nice on the shelf!

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Murnane posted:

Hey John @jhz563 - welcome to the "Rich Murnane is a dummy and bought something he didn't completely understand" party.

 

I would more call it the “hey - maybe Rich got more than he bargained for party.” 

There is still a chance that as a preproduction unit it may have one of a kind problems, but not likely.  

I would definitely swap the battery and the speaker.

Update:  I replaced the battery and the speaker and then took it down to the club last night to try out everyone's suggestions, but had no luck getting it to start up.  It still runs conventionally on track without TIU/DCS/etc., so I don't think I did any damage while doing my simple repairs, which I'll consider a minor victory.

I'm going to see if the one club member who is an MTH Certified Tech can spend some time on it next, unless one of you has time to tinker with it, if so please send me an email and we can work out the details.

Thanks again for all the responses....Rich

 

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 The engine must be seeing the dcs signal  , It's doing what it's suppose to do.... remain dark & silent until addressed by the remote. Problem is we can't get it added , unless it's been added and is hiding someplace... Is a remote reset a option along with the recover mentioned by others. Programming track is a must. (small test track will work)

Hi Guys,

Yes I tried the recovery process as Joe outlined above (and was originally suggested by Barry), I also removed all the other engines which were already on the remote before doing this as it seemed like a reasonable approach.  I was doing this all on the club track #1 which is a programming track.  I'm not sure what a "remote reset" is as I'm a newbie to DCS/TIU/etc., if that is one of the options on the remote I did not try that, as it is a club remote and TIU/track/etc.

I'm also tempted to get my own TIU/Handheld for the home layout since I don't want to screw up the club setup by playing around with all this.  And of course then I'd have the setup, first I need to figure out how much "milk money" I have saved up for trains though, we'll see.

Thanks again all...Rich

 

 Not really.  It's possible to have 5 tiu on a really big layout and each TIU  has it's own ID(number)  from 1 to  5.

The recover feature must be used with tiu 1. it won't work with the other tiu numbers.(2 to 5)

 You're at a bit of a disadvantage when you have to try every thing at the club but it's certainly possible to do.

 

 

oh, I didn't catch what you guys meant by that.  As best I can tell, the club has a Z4K and TIU for Tracks 1&2, and another set for tracks 3&4.  When I looked at the setup it seemed pretty straightforward and uncomplicated, but I can try again in a couple days when I go down there.

Thanks again for all the help...Rich

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