I recently purchase a Lionel Legacy 2-8-8-2, catalog number 2131180 through an auction site. The item was listed as "Like new with minimal run time. All features work as they should".
After receiving the engine, which was packaged very well, I inspected and found a couple of issues. The bell cord wire was detached and pulled forward about 2 inches. The ladder on the rear of the tender was bent back and the top portion of the ladder was detached from the tender body. Both these repairs were resolved without too much fuss. I was careful to not scratch the tender shell when placing the ladder tabs back into the tender body. Appearance wise, everything else was fine.
When I placed the engine and tender on the track, everything worked except there were no sounds. The tender reverse light, rear coupler and both smoke units worked. The cab, marker and front lights worked as they should. Interestingly, the sounds worked in conventional mode, including the background sounds, chuffing, bell, and whistle (non legacy sounds).
I tested the tender with another similar engine and it worked fine in Legacy mode.
After I removing the engine shell, I found the 3 wires leading to the red fire box LEDs were damaged. The black wire was completely severed and the other two wires had insulation worn through to the bare wire. The three wires ran along the relatively sharp outside edge on the back of the motor, in close contact to the inside of the shell. I also noticed the motor had a little side to side movement. Based on this, the motor movement and the pinched wires, lead to the failure.
I repaired the wires (solder and heat shrink tubing) and ran them down near the bottom of the motor away from the side edge of the motor. I tightened the three screws holding the motor mount. These are accessed from the bottom of the engine (see photo). All three screws were loose. After tightening, the motor movement was no more.
I tested the engine with the shell off. The red LED fire box lights now worked. (I did not notice they were not working initially.) However the sounds still did not work. I did an engine reset. When doing the reset, there was no sound conformation that changes were made, so I did a 2nd reset. This time, the whistle sound conformation worked. The reset code for this engine is AUX1 "0". I find placing the Legacy CAB2 remote in CAB1 mode is easier as it displays the numbers on the screen. This solved the sound issue.
I was relieved the sounds started to work again. My fear was the sound board might have been damaged due to the short.
I hope this repair information is useful to others.
As a side note, anytime I open an engine, I now inspect the smoke units. I replace any charred batting, oil the fan motors, inspect and clean or replace heating elements as needed.
