You recall a few months ago I was lamenting the large number of locomotives I had out of service with various issues. I am happy to report four of them are repaired and back in action. It's amazing how doing one small thing can get my juices flowing and I'm finding myself excited to work on the layout for the first time in a good long while.
My Atlas Trainmaster was the first locomotive outshopped. It'd sucked a piece of ballast into its gears. The repair was dead simple. Pull the bad truck, carefully rotate the gears until the bind, then back off till you find the offending piece of ballast. The whole deal took maybe five minutes.
Next up was the Broadway Limited Centipedes. The loco also swallowed some ballast. I was dreading taking the trucks apart and just kind of let them sit for a while. Turns out, the trucks aren't that bad. So again, another five-minute repair. Since one centipede can't run without the other, both units were returned to service.
Last but not least was my Broadway Limited E7. These were out of service for years. Some time ago, the derailed, shorted, and cooked their decoder. But, they were warrantied and I got a free replacement. I put it in, but the locos would barely creep with the throttle wide open. I knew it was a decoder problem, so I plopped the A unit onto the programming track. I started by setting CV8 to 008, a factory reset. That did it! All I had to do was re-address the locomotive and that was, as they say, that.
Four locomotives still await repair, the I1 needs a new tender truck and decoder, the T1 may need to go back to BLI, my Atlas GP7 has a decoder issue and my Lifelike Alco FB needs a complete rebuild. The A unit is useless without the B.
So that's that. I have some cool ideas for finishing Johnstown but I need to look at some lighting options. Stay tunned.
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