Locomotive quit after address purge - Digitrax DCS100.

Last night I was going through my roster and making sure everything was in good running order for the holidays and had successfully tested 4 out of 5 Kato Santa Fe SD40s (one was dead - not sure why). Then I moved on to my CB&Q F3s... The first F3A checked out fine. Then I grabbed the 2nd F3A and was running it through it's paces and it simply stopped for no apparent reason while running in reverse. What's odd was that the timing of when it stopped was very soon after the "tell-tale" 3-beeps of the DCS-100 purging an address that was no longer in use. What's odd is that the decoder still responds to inputs (headlight on/off, fwd/reverse changes headlight direction) and on the programming track I can read all the CVs without issue and everything looks normal. It just won't move.

As far as things I've tried... I reset the F3's decoder to factory settings, I also reset the DCS-100 (OpSw #39) both to no avail. I tried running a previously tested locomotive and it ran fine. It could just be a coincidence and the purge could have nothing to do with the problem. Perhaps the motor died for some mechanical reason.

One thing I will try today is to swap out the decoder with the other working locomotive to rule out a mechanical problem. The decoder in question is a Digitrax DN163K0B (basic decoder, no sound). I just wanted to post this to see if any of you had run in to this or a similar issue.

Thanks,
Don

 

Hi Don,

If it is not hard wired, check the motor connections at the decoder. Just a thought.

Gary

 

The best and most reliable way is to solder the motor leads to the decoder pads. Over 200 F units like this and no problems at all.

PS, I do the same thing with the E units, PA Units and the P42'a that way. Any Kato locomotive that comes with the gray plastic button needs to be soldered.

 

Turns out it was that grey plastic button... I guess there was enough of a connection for the decoder to send/recieve signals to/from the command station but not enough to get sufficient current to move the loco. At anyrate, I'm leaning towards David's solution and just soldering the connections.

Thanks for all the input,
Don