Hey All,
First, this forum has been amazing! Thank you for all the (previous) help you've provided. My Christmas layout has been a nightmare this year - in part because 2 of my engines are having issues. The one I'm asking about here is a B&O F7 PS3 engine from MTH. It only gets used at Christmas, and I've had it for 4 years (this being the 4th Christmas) - it's MTH 20-20605-1. From the beginning it has had some strange sound issues (e.g. when I run through the PSA announcement some are garbled, sometimes the engine volume randomly ramps up or goes silent and then turns back to normal). Anyway, I can't have more than 40 hours of "play" time on this engine, if that.
The other day as it was driving it started making a bit of a buzzing/grinding noise. I thought it had maybe hit something my kids put on the track. Upon further inspection, the front wheels will "drive" when I set it forward, but the back wheels do not. When I manually rock the back wheels forward and backward they seem to move the gears without issue. The train, however, will not move forward because the back wheels seem to be "stuck."
I'm curious if anyone has suggestions on what to look at to repair this? I'm not afraid of tearing into things and even replaced a set of trucks on another MTH engine I have. This makes the 4th MTH engine with issues and not a lot of run time. So frustrating!! Thanks, again.
Gratefully,
Seth
