Lionel 6-28838 H16-44 the motor driver board is overheating.

Could be the insulator is damaged and causing the short.  Try replacing it.  They bust be isolated from AC Ground.  Otherwise the Triac/FET shorted and needs to be replaced.

If motors good, should work after replacing motor driver. G

Thanks g

I'd also want to make SURE the motors are not drawing excessive current.  I'd unplug the motor board large black connector and then run the motors with a DC power supply on the bench in a cradle and check the current draw.  I normally apply a little friction to the wheels and see what the current draw is.  It's actually fairly hard to draw more than about 1A a motor without actually stalling the motors.  If they're drawing more than that, I'd look into that issue.

If the Odyssey board is dead, my recommendation would be to replace it with the ERR Cruise Commander M, it offers better speed control and more speed steps for finer low speed control.

Thanks also john

I recently repaired a Lionel E5 A unit with a motor driver board that would work forward and in reverse get extremely hot and eventually start smoking the wires. I promptly change the motor driver  board with an extra I had and all was good.

I agree with John though. If you have the extra cash, buy and upgrade to an ERR board.

Question. In my second photo would these two black wires be soldred to the cruise m board if I got one to replace the old board? Other than these two wires the cruise m looks easy to install. Never installed one of these before. Thanks.

Nope, you'd leave those wires out.  Not sure where the one on the side goes, that's connected to pin 1 which is the serial data.  The one on the end of the board looks like they just added a ground for whatever reason.

Thanks john 

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Nope, you'd leave those wires out.  Not sure where the one on the side goes, that's connected to pin 1 which is the serial data.  The one on the end of the board looks like they just added a ground for whatever reason.

John,

Does one of the wires go to the Odyssey on off switch?

Well, one is a ground, don't know why there would be a wire soldered to the back of the DCDS on the serial line.  I presume there is a wire in the connector at pin one.

Quick update to my issue. It seams a insulated plastic washer was not installed in the middle of one of the pem nuts that hold the heatsink onto the motor board. Hence the sparking and over heating. After a new one was installed the overheating and motor board returned to normal. Only the engine would only move in one direction. The board was probably damaged because of the isulation issue. So I ordered a cruise m board. Will get it going again when it arrives. Thanks for all the advice. Seems I have been getting a lot of bad engines lately with minor issues or in this case a major one. The bright side though is each one is a new learning experiance. I can also be assured that each engine I have is well maintained and 100% functional. Never thought I would own this many. Through patients,trouble shooting and fixing any issues my self, asking a lot of questions here and carefull buying used engines at the right price. I have built up a nice roster of engines for my bigger dream layout some day. Again thanks to everyone for your help and advice. I am buy no means a certified tech, but I am slowly getting less afraid of working on these modern engines and blowing something up than I once was. 

That's quite possibly one of the triacs, they're easy to replace and not that expensive.