I purchased new an Atlas B23-7 wiht DCC and sound for the Minnesota Commercial (for transfer runs from their yard (staging) to Marionapolis on my layout) a few days ago via a hobby shop purchase on Ebay and placed on my test loop, totaly dead both in DCC and DC. Tried reseting the loco per instructions and that funky magic wand and nada. I have contacted both the hobby shop and Atlas, it looks like I am going to have to send it to Atlas for replacement / repair (repair is fine with me)....but before I do this, is there something obvious I am missing? I did pop the shell off and wow is this one tightly pack loco. All of the connections appear to be good to go so I am thinking it is a dead on arrival decoder.
Try emailing Atlas also, you might get a timely response to see if there is anything you can do prior to shipping for service or replacement.
Spoke with Atlas today both email and phone and the this loco will be heading off to New Jersey for repairs. I am not expecting to see this loco again until sometime in June if all goes well. This got me thinking, my LHS had this loco with sound but in road number 1971 (mine is 1978) and this whole ordeal while not terrible may have been worth spending the extra $40 for MSRP (not including shipping) to have purchased from my LHS. If a problem did arrise, the LHS is less than a mile from where I live (also why my wallet is always so skinny )and I either could have swaped it out or received a prompt refund. Atlas is standing behind their product and providing good customer service on this deal. Still, it ia a hassle to package up the loco, ship it and wait and then wait some more.
I sent off a steam loco (not to Atlas) for a decoder install (beyond my skills) to a "recommended" company that does after market installs, 12 months later was still waiting. When I got the loco back after many emails and phone calls, nothing had been done with it. My point here is June is less then 3 months away and I am sure that Atlas will make it right. I had an Atlas installed decoder die within a week of getting the loco. After a few emails to and from Atlas all was made right. Gary
Bad Connections Did you check the connections with an ammeter? That is how I usually find loose connections. Also, I don't think it is unusual to have connection problems. I usually solder the wire pickup connections to the PC board, but I once found the trace on the PC board to be broken. You wouldn't think so and I didn't think so, but my club members pointed all these things out. Atlas will handle it now, but it is something to keep in mind.
One of my Atlas loco's was driving me crazy doing something similar. I could not reset it for the life of me. The instructiions just were not working. I have finally found a way to reset it consistently. Maybe this will help with your situation. I have a digitrax super chief system. 1. Put the loco on the track. Set the throttle to 00 for DC. 2. Place the magic wand near the reed switch. It doesn't seem to matter which way its pointing but try it one way and if it doesn't work do ith the other way (perpendicular or horizontal). 3. Turn on track power. 4. Turn up the throttle to max over a period of about 6 seconds. 5. Leave it at max for a few seconds. 6. Turn off track power. 7. Turn track power back on, go to address 03 on your throttle, and the loco will come to life and say "reset". Now these instructions sound similar to whats in the atlas manual, but the atlas manual says the loco will say "reset" once you get the throttle to max. This had me stumped for hours. Finally I figured out that it will say reset once power is off and turned back on again. I bet this will get you squared away. The loco I had that wa s acting like yours was also brand new and has been fine ever since.
"Computers-here to make your life easier and convenient".....starts to bludgeon the ghost of Pascal with the ghost of a '56 Mantua 4-6-4. -Mark
