Thank you for all the information!
Long story short was letting my nephew run the loco in tmcc on a massive loop with only 1 power pick-up.. (temp track loop that didnt have additional pickups or fast trip breakers at the time fml)
It slowed down on the other side of the room and he left it on max throttle instead of turning down the power my mistake.
Good 20 seconds later Z-1000 breaker tripped and smoke/smell was coming out the tender i think it was stuck on the low power spot of the track then got cooked with the full throttle applied...ugh lol.
I will look into the ERR boards as a replacement, i still have the oem r2lc but its rough, attached a pic of both sides. Thank you for the help!