A lousy idea. A three wheeled truck or vehicle (I've heard of motorcycles with sidecars) will only work if the single wheel is not directly across from either of the other wheels. It must be behind one, and ahead of the other.
I feel your pain. I had this happen to a Kato NW-2. I was fortunate, Kato had trucks for sale at the time of the "incident". So, I got her back in service relatively fast. Wolf
Thanks guys for looking and sending reply. Yes, it is the DCC power/stuck across a switch malady. Our club has 3 Digitrax P42's covering 12 sections, I think that is what they are called, that IMHO are nothing but crap. Several, not all mine, locos have suffered this problem. We are currently trying to find something that would work. You know, maybe we should go back to the low tech 1157 12v auto bulbs as protection. This locomotive is a FVM GP60. Have yo tried to get parts from FVM lately? So here are my personal fixes; 1) Tomorrow I will install on/off switch on all of my refinery sidings so that I can totally isolate the track. If that had been in place last Sunday this truck would not have melted, The loco was sitting idle and somehow I turned the throttle (D-trax) knob to "1" and the engine crept along until it came to a switch and it hung up trying to slip through. What was I thinking. Won't happen in the future. 2) The loco repair, and this may be of interest to you, was a new truck. I don't know how to get anything including answers from Matt at FVM. Yes, I am aware of his personal problems and have said many prayers for him and his family. Have not heard anything lately and hope things are getting better. Back to the fix, so I got to thinking about Matt and I know he was at one time associated with IM in Colorado. So is it possible that some of his design was influenced by IM. At any rate, I have an IM F3 that I mucked up some time ago. Guess what, the truck form that F3 fit the FVM perfectly, runs well and smooth. I really dodged a big pile of you know what. Back to life, Carl
You need to replace the Digitrax PM42's with PSX devices from Digital Specialties, and that will never happen again.
Not familiar with the PM42 but I use the PSX and have had no issues on the home layout. Perhaps they react more quickly and are generally better being solid state. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
PM42 uses 1968 technology relays, and there is not much customization you can do with that. The DCC Specialties PSX devices not only are ultra fast being solid state, but that also are user configurable too. You can set it to allow inrush current if you have a lot of locomotives with sound decoders etc....
