"Black Hole" dead spot issue

20-20736-1.  I finally understand Proto 3-2.  3 rail to 2 rail compatible.  I am showing my green side with a lot of this.  I thought you meant sound 3 from sound 2 conversion and kept asking myself, what the heck does that have to do with operational ability.  But it's an engine that can be easily operated on a 3 rail set up or a 2 rail set up.  Know that I am aware of that, I am going to look up the DDA40X and see if that one has the same issue.  The one I bought was a reboot of the 1998 model and it came out in, wait for it, music builds, smoke clears, an errant bird flies by...….2017.  So this is probably not a pick up wheel issue but a design change that causes an issue probably not thought of in the R&D room.  Depending on how much a set of 2016 trucks cost, I may just stick to 10 or better smph when operating this Engine.  My fear is that even if the trucks are inexpensive as a set or one at a time, finding 2016 trucks designed paint wise for a Union Pacific locomotive may not be possible.  My BNSF has the silver covers over them that fit the real world look.  The UP under carriage is brown.  I will ask MTH, if I can get them to talk to me, and see what they have on site.

Thank you so much for this information, now I have one more tidbit of knowledge that will help me in the future when purchasing train items.  Until right now I had no idea what that P3-2 meant. 

John

Quick update.  I was wrong about the DDA40X.  It's a 2016.  3 rail compatible but the features weren't listed so I didn't have the ability to see if the 3-2 was there.  But with it being a 16 instead of a 17, my bad, my guess is the length may be the issue here.  Again it speeds past bumps if you have it going fast enough, but when it died crossing a set of back to back's at 14 smph, that's when I decided to shelve it.

I think we are back to the drawing board on this one.  I checked the features on the MTH website for the BNSF, Union Pacific, and CSX ES44AC's that I have.  First of all, the BNSF, again my fault for not looking closely, is a 2015 version.  20-20511-1.  But, big but here, the features say that it too is a PS3-2 just like the problem child Union Pacific one that is a 2017. 20-20736-1.  The CSX is a 2017 Imperial class, pardon the Star Trek jargon, or Railking baby version that says nothing about PS3-2 in the features.  Baby version means it's not scale length and is designed to run on 031 curves where Premiers would throw everything out of whack if you tried that.

My point is that the 2015 navigates the switch without so much as a burp, twitch or wink.  My RJ Corman is an SD40-2 built just last year with the PS3-2 rail conversion capability, and I told you what happened there.  It passed over a back to back switch set up, stopped, shut down, and no sooner had the engine sounds gone quiet, it woke up, restarted in "wildcat" mode, started spewing smoke again, and just sat there.  UP shuts down and goes quiet and never starts again unless I move it by hand and restart it.  The DDA40X is a 2016 re-do of the 1998 PS2 version.  I have no idea if it is PS3-2 because the features tab in the website brings nothing to the screen to read.  Best I can do is the Description.  My guess, since the BNSF is a 16 and has it, so does the DD.

I thought we might be on to something until I discovered the engine that has no issue with the switch has the "marker" in its DNA that makes both of my Union Pacific engines stall and die at 5 miles per hour.  So here is what I have decided to do to fix this.  For every reader of this thread who has inwardly or outwardly just said to themselves, "oh for heavens sakes just run the darn things faster and be done with it."  That's what I am going to do.  Thanks for all the assistance and the advice, you've been wonderful and I appreciate it.  But on the matter of the black hole, case closed.

John