I didn't know it could do that!!!

....  The engine is on it's way back to the customer, so that testing is over.

Yup, I figured the train has left the station.

I suspect this may never come up again.  And, if this was a systemic issue with PS3 boiler electronics, I'd think it would have been observed and reported albeit conventional PS3 operators aren't in the majority.

But if this comes up again by anyone, please tack on to this thread so I'll get a notification.  This is one of those curious cases that would be interesting to solve just for the sport. 

FWIW, I had replaced the boiler board as that was the failure.  It also took out the tach reader, so that was repaired as well.  The original issue was simply a loose wire on the smoke motor, it must have touched the frame and killed the boards.  Both old and new boards were the newer AE-1000033 EMI Boiler Board.

6-7 volts seems pretty low for PS-2 or 3 boards and winds up drawing a higher current flow.  Plus you intentionally had the motor in a stall condition at that voltage.  I always power up to 10V and then up to 12 once started up.  It was always brown out that damaged sensitive electronics in my prior life.  Not clean breaks in power.  So I am leery of trying to run electronics at a marginal voltage.  G

George, this is for conventional running.  If you start out at 10-12 volts, at least with the engine in question, it's off like a shot!

Question for both John and G. If you use a new style boiler board in an older style PS3 locomotive, will it be damaged immediately if power is applied? Do you need to download a new file to support the new boiler board? I tried installing a new style board in a first run ESE 4-4-0 and it didn't work.

According to Jason and the service bulletins, as long as you use the proper chain files, you can mix-n-match EMI and non-EMI boards.  I know I just loaded a PS/3 board set with the relay board (non-EMI) with an EMI tender board, runs fine.

This is the service bulletin that addresses that issue: service_bulletin_101017a

If you don't have the correct code, you can run into issues.  I had this happen one time early on, the boiler board obviously was fighting itself and apparently turned on all the motor driver FETs at once.  Fortunately, I had my bench magnetic circuit breaker enabled, and the breaker tripped immediately and didn't cook the board.

Thanks for the info John.

It doesn't damage unless you leave it in a direction state.  Apparently the motor fets fire together and it will draw high current in a stalled condition. G

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

George, this is for conventional running.  If you start out at 10-12 volts, at least with the engine in question, it's off like a shot!

Not my experience with PS-2 or above.  The cruise limits speed.  Now PS-1 is a different beast.  6-7 seems way low to me for command engines.  Even Lionel doesn't like it.  G