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I bought a 256 some time ago, but never had a chance to get it out of the box. Today I did, and did the usual lube stuff. I put it on the track and turned up the juice. First thing I notice is the bulb's not lit. However, it is making sounds. I press the button to put it into forward- nothing. Backwards. Nothing. The manual says it might be locked in neutral, and so I did the reset horn-bellx5. I do not hear 2 horn blasts after I am done, though. Still nothing. See the video...

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But then, it does run. I have no idea what I did. I turn it off after a few laps, and once again I can't get it started. You know, I never had to do this with N Scale... my second "electric" loco that I can't get to work right... but we'll get to my IVES electric later...

 

Any ideas? I will admit I don't quite get this "neutral-forward-neutral-reverse" stuff, and no, if I can't get the basics to work, I am not going to go into DCS.

 

Thanks!

 

Although a PS-2 engine start it like a PS-1. Turn the voltage to 12 volts or more on startup for 10 seconds and then throttle back to below 9 volts and cycle it into forward. Try another transformer and charge the battery. One of the 3 should fix it.

A PS-2 engine should be using a 6 volt bulb. Check the voltage in the socket. Is this a older 256 with a 5v board?

After sitting for so long the battery is probably dead and must be recharged. If the battery is not fully charged the engine will never leave reset (the first neutral). The easiest way is to leave it set on the track with the power on and above 12 volts for about 10 hours. This should be described in the manual.

 

The second possibility is one of mis-operation. When the power is first turned on the engine is in a condition called "RESET". This looks just like neutral. To get it to run you need to turn the power off and then back on in less than 3 seconds. If you have the power off for longer than the 3 seconds the engine will go back into reset. Now the problem. For some reason some transformers do not turn the power all the way off if you use the speed control. If the transformer has a direction button some times that will work. Some transformers requier some sort of load on the track such as a lighted car or some other light connected to the track. This is not a problem of the engine but one of the transformer. This is why MTH puts out the list of recomended transformers.

 

The reason why you got it going that one time is that the battery has a marginal charge from your playing with it and was just able to let you get it out of reset. Once you got it running you turned the voltage down so it did not go too fast and that was not enough to continue to charge the battery. The result was the battery voltage dropped and it would not come out of reset again. I believe if you gave the battery time to charge as the manual indicates you will be OK.

 

Al

Originally Posted by Allan Miller:
Originally Posted by BnO_Hendo:

Ok. I just ordered an MTH transformer. Let's see if that makes a difference.

 

 

 

 

 

My guess is that it will make a positive difference. You'll note, based on the list of transformers in your MTH owners manual, that the MRC Throttlepack is not among the recommended transformers.

Agreed. When I got my first MTH PS2-equipped loco, I thought the recommended transformer list that was in the literature was so much fluff. Little did I know.    Especially when I tried it with a CW-80. Yikes!  It does seem to make a difference.

Last edited by johnstrains

It's a bit hard to tell, but I notice that in the video you provided, the sounds shut-down sequence did appear to be operating pretty much normally the one time you turned the power off.  That leads me to believe it's not a battery problem.  It wouldn't hurt to charge it though, just to be on the safe side.  Leave it on the track with power turned up and volume pot turned down/off overnight and see if that makes a difference.  I suspect that it won't.

 

I still think trying it with another transformer (preferably an MTH Z1000) may do the trick.

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