Sad Tornado

[choralc]

I have received a Tornado R3245TTS with issues.

 

The poor thing must have taken a nose dive off the layout. Body damage is very minor. Front coupler destroyed so removed. Buffer plate cracked. Will put a micro drop or two of super glue on that when my tremors are looking the other way and add a dab of paint. A triangle shaped body extension on the side had cracked and bent in behind part of the running gear.

 

Also a pickup behind one of the driving wheels seems to be sloppy.

 

The body was removed and fortunately the running gear was not damaged.

 

Decoder was given a new id and confirmed. The loco ran smoothly on the rolling road. Slowly and faster. Forwards and reverse.

 

F1 was pressed and the TTS decoder performed well for a few minutes and playing all the sounds.

 

Then I showed my good lady the lamps that had been added before the previous owner bought the loco. F0. Oooooh pretty. The fine wires to the lamps have been glued to the body to prevent them fouling the front bogie and when turning the body to show the red lamp on the back of the tender (that's another story) something shorted and everything stopped. Error on the Elite display. Hmm a short I think.

 

Restart the Elite and no chuff chuff but whistles and toot. Hmmm, F1 off then on. Chuff-chuff but no other sound.. I think I did a decoder reset after a little walk after being cranky with myself and sound returned but now loco stops and starts which should sound familiar to some but I know this loco ran well untill I pulled on the wiring.

 

If I press down on the loco it seems to be okay but where I'm pressing is where the wires have been looped together and taped to the top of the chassis.

 

There is definitely a gremlin in the connectivity. What I haven't narrowed down is whether it's in the lamp wiring, any other wires or from the track up to the decoder.

 

I put the body back on after removing the tape and replacing it firmly on the small bundle of wires and again power is not consistently getting to the motor but if I press down over where the wires would be taped down the connectivity is restored and it runs and does what a TTS is supposed to do.

 

The next obvious thing to do is to clean the wheels, wheel backs, pickups if I can reach them, see if that pickup is broken, clean rolling road and check wires from the elite. After that I am open to suggestions as to what course of logical fault checking I should undertake including decoder removal, lamp disconecting and so on. The emphasis is on logical progression.

[pidder]

For one awful moment I thought your title  was referring to the full sized engine... I would disconnect the added lamps first as a possible cause of your problems..