Lionel Legacy 6-85800 SD38

Why won't they work on it?  That doesn't sound like much of a repair shop!  Are you sure of the number, I don't find that on the Lionel site or the parts site.

Sorry , it's 6-82800 BTO Legacy EJ&E SD-38. The only Lionel Authorized service near me is Thunder Road Hobbies in Moline ILL and it's 2 hours from me , so I called them on Sunday and they said to bring it in , so Friday I drove 2 hours to get there only to be told by there repair person that its too new and we don't work on them ( WTH ) I thought . I removed the shell yesterday and dont see anything burnt but as soon as I put track power too it it shorts out.

Unfortunately, there are many "repair shops" that have an old curmudgen on retainment who swings by one day a week to pick up repairs to take home and if a PCB is involved, won't even look at it.

You can't really blame them as with electronics and newer items, you are at the mercy of the manufacturer to publish information/documentation and supply parts which often enough they do not do and nobody wants to pay reasonable labor rates for the work.

Is this new or have you run it before? Can you see any wires from the trucks that might be pinched or scraped and shorting? 

Well, from the sounds of things, it'll clearly have to come apart to see what happened.  I've run across a number of Legacy locomotives recently that had either pinched wires or wires tightly bent around something sharp that have shorted and smoked.  In those cases, it's frequently necessary to fix the wiring and most likely replace the board.  The modern Legacy stuff is very unforgiving about having things grounded to the frame.  FWIW, MTH PS/3 has the same issue, grounds are almost always a very bad thing.

Anyone know which board to replace and where to get one ?

Found a short between the pins circled in this photo which lead to the pos. and ground on the trucks . anyone know where I can get one ? and what it is actually called. Thanks

Well, that's not a board that stopped it from moving, that's the sound board.  Removing that whole board will only remove the sound.

FWIW, I can see the bridge rectifier has smoked, I've been successful in the past at fixing some of those.

Here's the parts breakdown for the 6-82800 Locomotive: Lionel 6-82800 Parts Breakdown

From that list, this is the board You're looking at.

Would you be willing to repair this ?

Send me an email and we'll discuss it. 

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Why won't they work on it?  That doesn't sound like much of a repair shop!  Are you sure of the number, I don't find that on the Lionel site or the parts site.

While true, back to the old fact that there has not been any training.  Or published documentation on these engine by Lionel.  Plus you really can't stock parts under their model since most everything is model specific software.  So the time involved far exceeds what they could reasonable charge.  Your seeing a decision made a decade ago playout in a negative impact to the hobby.  IMHO.

Now that you found the source of the short, you want to unplug it and then see if the rest of the engine functions still work fine.  G

No argument from me that it's harder to get repair information about newer stuff.  I've had to do it the hard way, just start fixing them until you get familiar with the new boards.  Bruk's breakdowns of the newer Legacy wiring have been a huge help, that really helped me turn the corner on modern Legacy repairs.  One bonus is the fact that while the RCMC is unique for each application, the actual board connections are the same across the board.  There are several versions of the RCMC, but it's a manageable number.