I wanted to pass this info on to anyone who has experienced this issue in the past. The issue, in a nutshell, is finding after you put a dormant engine on the tracks for some needed exercise, that the Railsounds system either is totally quiet, or the Railsounds sound package is intermittent in operation.
I experienced this phenomenon twice this past year on my 38053 NYC L2a mountain & my 28262 WP SD70ACe. When I put them on the track and powered them up, I got either no sound (other than hearing the amplifier "juicing" the speaker) or the sounds came and went randomly.
My first inclination at repair was removing and re-installing the R2LC, the RS board, and the RS amplifier board in the Railsounds 5.5 modular package. I also removed the sound chips on the front and rear face of the Railsounds board and re-seated them to clean the contacts. On one engine this approach worked, but only lasted one day; the next day I was back at square one.
Per the attached pictures of the front and rear faces of the Railsounds board, my ultimate solution was to take my small soldering iron and "re-flow/melt" the solder on each of the 24 main board connectors to ensure a good connection to the board traces. This has been a lasting fix for me-hopefully it will be for you as well.
As a point of reference, I borrowed this idea from a gentleman that "re-built" my ailing Fisher500 component stereo receiver a few years ago. When asked how he "re-built" it, he answered he re-did all the wire solder connections on the chassis. It worked on my 44 year old receiver and it'
s worked on my 10 to 13 year old Railsounds systems as well.
