MTH 2 rail steam.

No.  They run fine.  Mine is a Hudson, but I have had a Northern, a Challenger, and a huge N&W Mallet on my test loop and all did quite well.  I was not happy with the appearance of my Hudson, so rebuilt the engine part with proper size cylinders and frame, and Lobaugh drivers.  Had nothing to do with operation; purely cosmetic.

I have two (ATSF 4-6-4 Blue Goose and UP Big Boy 4014 "as restored") that I'm running where they aren't supposed to be running (3-rail club layout with a 36" sharp curve in the mix). They run well and sound good. I've test run both of them conventionally (on 2-rail track with AC and DC power and they run smoothly that way as well. I also have a 2-rail "imposter" ATSF 4-6-4 Hudson (hi-rail wheels that can run 2-rail) which also runs well on 2-rail track.

The only thing I don't like (technical point) is that they're wired "like" 2-rail steam, but the positive/negative pickup wheel locations are reversed from standard. This shouldn't impact 2-rail operation but it's something to take note of if you have other conventional DC steam.

I  heard that earlier MTH 2 rail steam power were good runners, and being a supporter of Fire-up 611 I ordered the new MTH J  PS3 convertible 2rail/3 version to run in "excursion" service during open house running on my PRR themed railroad.  I have been disappointed ever since I opened the box and put it on the rails.  Initially the locomotive would jerk as it ran down track, and randomly stall at times.  The jerking grew more severe (popped a knuckle on a baggage car) and eventually lead to a failure of one of the pins in the 6 pin plug connector that ties the wiring harness to the printed circuit board engine/tender drawbar.   The engine and tender separately pick up from both rails, and share power through the 6 conductor drawbar.  The engine pickups up left rail power via sprung plungers that press down on the half axel of drivers 1,2, and 4.  The electrical path is through light duty springs and appears to be negatively impacted by axel lubrication.  Heavy non conducting paint on the screws that tie wires to each plunger didn't help.  I used my trusty old Simpson meter to uncover the painted screw issue.  Polishing the screws helped, but the plunger pickup electrical path remained somewhat intermittent.  Un-sprung drivers add to the problem entering super-elevated  curves.  The engine picks up right rail power through axel wipers on the tender truck.  The engine won't run without a reliable circuit path to the tender as that is where much of the PS3 electronics reside.  The tender picks up left rail power by axel wipers on the front truck, and right rail power from wipers on the rear truck.  The tender body is electrically isolated from both rails.  MTH uses 6 conductors on the  printed circuit board engine-tender drawbar plus the spring wire under the drawbar to provide 7 electric paths between the circuit boards in the engine and tender.  In my case apparently one of those paths is intermittent and became progressively more so with running.  At this point I've been waiting 3 weeks for a replacement PS3 drawbar from MTH customer support.  

Other comments/opinions:

  - lots of sound - but it all  comes out of the wrong (tender) end of the locomotive.  I'd rather give up the fan driven smoke for a speaker in the smokebox.

- weak pulling power.  For a heavy locomotive it pulls far less than comparably (and lighter) sized brass USH, OMI, Sunset ones. My  Sunset T1 will pull 12 GGD aluminum body passenger cars up a 2.2% grade, the MTH J could only handle 6.  Part of the problem is that the leading and trailing truck springs are too strong and take weight off the unspring drivers.  Shortening the leading and trailing truck springs helped - the MTH J can now haul 8 GGD Pullmans up the mountain.

- difficult to couple the engine and tender.   As has been reported with numerous posts on the 3 rail forum the drawbar with 6 pin vertical plug is difficult to connect.  For me the best way was to lay the locomotive on its side on a towel, make the 6 pin plug connection, and then lift the engine and tender on to the rails. 

- wrong length drawbar - The N&W J came with a 40mm length drawbar - too long for the engine /tender apron to ride horizontal on the tender's deck plate. A 35mm drawbar would allow the apron to ride properly for most O scale 2 rail curves.  MTH lists 35mm PS3 drawbars but they are out of stock.  My suspension is they shipped the" convertible" 2rail3/rail model with the long drawbar so the model could run on tight 3 rail curves.  If impatient one could purchase from MTH a card with a set of 30, 35, and 40mm PS3 drawbars on it for $45 plus shipping.   I'll wait. (Caution - don't purchase the similar PS2 10 pin drawbar set).

- clunks through frogs -  Minor point but compared with sprung O scale locomotives, the MTH J makes a  loud "thunk" sound passing through turnout frogs.  The same statement can be made about sprung diesels vs un-sprung China drive diesels- annoying but not a show stopper.

-PS3 electronics - Works ok in DCC mode but does not offer as much user control of motor, lighting and sound as some DCC decoders

Bottom line - I'm an unhappy first time MTH customer.  In retrospect perhaps a better route would have been to hunt for a clean used Williams/Samhongsa brass N&W J and install a QSI Q3 DCC sound decoder.  

I have ordered the 2 rail version # 22-3630-2 not the convertible one. This doesn't impress me one bit after reading this. 

http://mthtrains.com/22-3630-2

I have 2 MTH steam engines. One runs pretty well. However, the other stalls over and over after less than a minute and requires restarting. I am not sure what to do to correct this problem. Otherwise, I am quite satisfied with features in the DCS system and its remote.

I have four MTH steamers, and all have exhibited some, or all, of the symptoms described by Ed.

I have solved the pickup problem by adding plunger pickups to the inside face of the driver wheels and the tender wheels.  

The tethers are another matter.  Each has its own flaws.  The wireless tether I have had no electrical problems with, but none of their fixed lengths are short enough to couple my L1 to its tender within a short enough distance to have a sensible firing plate.  The old Anaconda tether works fine if one is willing to settle for a 2 foot gap (yes, that's half an inch) between loco and tender.  making the gap shorter by choosing the "display hole" in the drawbar causes the rather large tether plug to foul the tender on curves.   It also puts a sideways stress on the socket, and eventually loosens the solder connectors to the board.  Converting to a straight tether gets rid of the Anaconda (BE AWARE THE PIN MAPING IS NOT THE SAME) allos close coupling and a realistic appearance, but evenually loosens the socket solder connections.

To be fair, I have not had pulling issues, but then three of mine do not have trailing trucks, and the one that does has a rather weak spring.

As much as I love the 611. I am kind of contemplating getting the 3rd rail K2A,but it's not a J and 56" radius curves I am out of room for. They do seem to have it together over there at 3rd rail. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions.

Brandon Cole posted:

As much as I love the 611. I am kind of contemplating getting the 3rd rail K2A. They seem to have it together over there. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions.

No, you are not. I have about 19 Sunset/3rd Rail brass steam locomotive models and really enjoy operating them. Any one of them usually elicits many favorable comments from visitors.

I only have space for 54 radius and K2A requires 56 radius. That's an issue. 

I have two MTH 2 rail Mohawks and each exhibited problems. I replaced the batteries with capacitors and now they both work flawlessly. I have an older MTH two rail Dreyfuss Hudson with the plug and it has a surging problem, not sure what it is. I also replaced that battery with a cap and I still have a problem. The older Dreyfuss does not seem to "listen" to the DCS as well as my newer engines. (I am running DCS V4.20.) I have several MTH 2 Rail diesels and they have all been flawless.

I did notice that all engines ran much better when I upgraded my power supply from a Control20 to a Bridgewerks DC controller with 10amp per side capability. I believe that if you are not providing sufficient power, the engines will "shed" various functions to make the best of the power that is provided. Smoke is a large power user, so I use it only at times for starting, but that is no longer a problem with the larger power supply.

Maybe the ones I tested were all from the 1990s.  I think if i were going to add an N& W "J" I would add another Williams 2-rail.  I understand there are inaccuracies, but I am not enough of an N&W guy to know what they are. I am delighted with the one I have, and only wish I had not re-motored it when I removed the unbalanced flywheel.

A 2-rail J sold just a week ago for around $300 - that is bargain territory, in my opinion.

I really do not care for the way MTH picks up 2-rail power.  I much prefer rim insulated drivers.  But I am not the market they are aimed at.

Brandon, while I don't have any specific information on the K2a I have heard that quite often the Sunset locomotives will do a little sharper that the minimum advertised radius. I have a Sunset Mohawk and I believe it can handle a 54" R curve and it also a minimum of 56"R. I will check it tomorrow and post the results back here. 

As for MTH, I have 8 steam locomotives. One Railking that was converted to 2 rail, one Premier 3 rail, one Premier 3 that was converted to 2 rail and 5 of the scale wheel locomotives. I like the way they run and sound, however I do not currently have a layout so I don't know how well they pull. A long time ago I ran the first 3/2 I ever got on a friends 3 rail layout,it was the CNJ Pacific. If I remember correctly it pulled 16 freight cars which was less than the 3 rail version with a traction tire did. I also ran this locomotive at my former train club. I don't remember it making any clunking sounds going across a switch but I could be mistaken as it was a long time ago. 

I agree about the wireless tether. It is not fun to connect and I connect mine the same way Ed does.

i haven't had operational issues except one of the 3/2 locomotives started to stall a lot and it turned out the wheels had gotten dirty. This was when I had a temporary layout which is gone. Once I cleaned the wheels it ran fine again. Now all I can do is back them on and off of my turntable but I haven't had any stalling that I can speak of. 

I wish Sunset would put sound decoders in their locomotives as I would be more apt to buy one. Or at least run all the wiring so I don't have to cut the locomotive up to do a DCC install. I have 3 Sunset locomotives and they do make an excellent product    

Brandon - I think you'll find your model is also "convertible" to 3 rail.  My MTH 2015 catalog N&W 611 carried item number 22-3571-2.  It was listed in the catalog as a 2 rail model (like your  J in the 2016 catalog).  MTH's 2 rail steam locomotives with the -2 suffix are delivered with scale wheels but have a 2-3 rail switch under the tender and you'll find a package of bolt on 3 rail rollers in the box.  Earlier (1990's era) MTH 2 rail steam locomotives had a different electrical setup and were not "convertible".  They may not have had split axels. 

  Based on the catalog illustration the 2016 MTH 611 J is painted in a nice high gloss finish to represent how it looks today. The 2015 model I have has a satin finish.  It will be interesting to see what other changes they've made - possibly extended coal boards on the tender???

If I decide to keep the model I'll install pickup wipers on the back of the drivers tires.  I've held off doing so as I didn't want to void the warrantee.  Hopefully the replacement drawbar will show up and solve some of the electrical issues.

One positive aspect of this for SPF's - for the first time a Pennsy T1 out pulled a N&W J - go figure! 

I've got Sunset Js, Williams Js and Overland Js, each having it's own positives but no major negatives. Best bang for the buck is Williams.  Best engine to modify to the version on you want and to paint is Sunset.  The museum piece........Overland!! 

I saw the drawings that Harold Davenport did of each version of J for Overland.   He worked for N&W/NS and had pulled the original drawings with the modifications on the drawings so Tom Marsh had unbelievable information to work with. 

I've never seen the MTH J but if you want something reasonably priced that runs great right out of the box watch ebay for a Williams J..............just my personal opinion.

 I've been watching this thread closely. I have roughly 100 MTH engine products. Only a very small percent have had to be worked on for me. I can't argue with anyone who posts facts about what they have. It is what it is. I would never have bought so many if I had that kind of troubles.

 The "wireless" drawbar seems to be a crucial factor in a lot of posts I read over problems. You must take care when handling it. Our grandsons broke theirs and that engine took a lot of abuse. I actually just leave mine connected as much as possible. If it gets broke, it must be replaced, period. The receptacle can get broke with rough handling also. G fixed our grandsons and because they are so young, I now gave them older PS1 models to learn how to handle stuff better.

 There have been certain engine releases that have had their own flaws. The earliest (late 90's??) MTH engines I have, I added wipers to. The most recent ones, run flawlessly for me. My engines do make noise going over frogs but so does everything else that runs over them, so I don't know any better. They don't stall or sputter and that's all I care about. My switches are large Atlas 2 rail and the frogs are currently dead. So I feel that is pretty good.

 Ed Rappe posting above, probably has ten times (100 Times?) the experience with stuff than I do. I fully respect his comments and feel bad that he has had a bad experience with it. I did not buy the J so I can't really say anything about it.

Keystoned Ed posted:

  Based on the catalog illustration the 2016 MTH 611 J is painted in a nice high gloss finish to represent how it looks today. The 2015 model I have has a satin finish.  It will be interesting to see what other changes they've made - possibly extended coal boards on the tender???

This would be a pleasant surprise to me if it had a glossy finish to it, but I'm sure the auxiliary tender will be satin finish! 

Needless to say I will be keeping my preorder of the 611 and hopefully won't have any problems with it. I will probably have it displayed mostly, but want to be able to run it on my small 10x11 single loop layout that's in the works, don't make fun of my limited 2 rail space lol. 

I am wondering if these engines need DCS to operate correctly and If DCC is the problem? Joe I am guessing you have DCS by your signature? What are you using AC or DC power supply? 

Thanks everyone for the help and keep it coming. 

Brandon. 

Brandon Cole posted:

 

I am wondering if these engines need DCS to operate correctly and If DCC is the problem? Joe I am guessing you have DCS by your signature? What are you using AC or DC power supply? 

 

Brandon

I tested an MTH F7 ABA set for a magazine review.  It has a PS3 system.  I ran it with DCS, DCC, straight DC, and straight AC.  The table below is listed as Control System: Power Supply---Functionality

DCS:  Lionel Modern ZW (18 VAC and 10 Amps)---All features accessible

DCC:  Lenz Set 100 (5 amps) S/W version 3.6, track voltage 16 volts (Thanks to Terry Terrance for use of his layout and system)---All DCC functions are supported. All functions that were available in DCS were accessible with DCC. The only variation is DCS allows separate control of the marker, interior and number board lights, whereas in DCC these can only be turned on and off as a group.   

Straight AC:  Modern Lionel ZW (18 VAC and 10 Amps)---Control of bell and horn, and by various sequences of the bell and horn, activates the speed control and announcements.  

Straight DC:  MRC Pure Power G power supply: (18 VDC max at 10 Amps)---The loco has constant intensity directional lighting, engine start up and shut down sounds, and smoke.   The latter can be turned off with a switch, the loudness of the entire sound system is controlled by an onboard potentiometer.  There are no additional functions (bell, horn, etc) and squealing brakes.  

Conventional Operation (be it straight DC or straight AC) is what I would call "Pain in the A@@ Mode"  The start up sequence in conventional takes several seconds.   It can take up to 30 seconds, depending on how charged the BCR is. The engine starts up at 6.5V, and moves at 7.5 Volts.  If more than 7.5 Volts is applied right away, the engine will not move to prevent sudden coupler snapping starts.  In that case, lower the voltage below 6.5 Volts.  If you lower the voltage below 6.5 Volts after the engine has started up, even if it is running, it will shut down and you have to go through the start up sequence.   In other words in my opinion, conventional operation is NOT RECOMMENDED. 

And for the record, unlike my experience with their steamers, I have never had a problem with an MTH diesel

I like to try different power supplies and I also run in G scale. I started my G scale with AC power and then switched it over to DC. I have MTH's (all), Lionel (180w AC bricks), Bridgewerks (3x DC packs), and a fixed DC power supply that "Tank" gave me. My engines run good with any of my power supplies. I would stay away from the low end Lionel (CW80?) packs as the MTH engines don't like them I have heard.

 MTH engines will run on straight DC, AC, DCC, and DCS. Once I bought my DCS system, I sold off my DCC. At that time, MTH engines would not run on DCC. I still have my first MRC Prodigy DCC that I use to test stuff when purchased with DCC inside. I never took the time to try it in O scale to this day, other than on my workbench.

 The biggest thing that is important to smooth running, is preventing big power drops around the layout. Even when I ran DCC, my other brands of G scale engines on DCC would struggle. So I always tune my layouts as I build to make sure the power is good all around. Most problems for me aren't from poor signal alone. They stem from poor power at various points. The things I've learned help keep me away from troubles like that now.

 If you ever choose to go with DCS, there are some simple rules to follow to ensure good signal and power distribution. It is the best value of a system that is out there. Many guys prefer DCC for absolute control I believe? Once I convert another brand of engine to MTH's PS system inside, there's no tweaking needed. It monitors the flywheel to ensure proper performance. I do like the newest DCC decoders for their premium sounds. I get what I need out of my system.

 I own (have owned) Digitrax, NCE, MRC, QSI, and Locksound...and?? decoders. I really enjoyed the HO scale locos I have with factory sound decoders inside. My favorites were Atlas and Broadway Limited. G scale, is all over the place in what people run and will purchase. Having MTH release their products in G, scale led me to MTH in the first place.

Shwoo, I'm tired! Darn flu.

Brandon  The performance of the MTH J on the railroad was not related to the control system - it was the lack of a reliable electrical paths from the rails up to the electronics in the locomotive.  There were two parts to the problem.  Initially it was intermittently picking up left rail power through the driver.   My first fix was to polish all the blackening off all the wheels (engine and tender) so that there was nothing but shinny tread.  That helped but still it would surge slightly when running at medium speed.  Apparently the flywheel kept it going through momentary loss of contact.  Next I disassembled the engine and found that the shiny black finish on the pickup plunger screws in effect insulated the screws holding the pickup wires to the plungers.    I polished the underside of on all screws in electrical paths of both the engine and tender.  That seemed to help but running issues came back and grew worse with time.  After talking with a service tech a MTH we concluded that one or more of the drawbar pins soldered to the traces on the printed circuit board was the likely culprit.  The jerky running put added stress on the drawbar and probably loosened a pin.  When MTH ships me a replacement drawbar I'll install it and find out if that solves the problem.  I still don't trust the driver axle pickup plungers as the current must flow through  lubricated surface on the axle.  Once past the 1 year warrantee (July) I'll probably install pickups running on the back side of the  drivers.

MTH knows about the non-conducting finish on the screws and hopefully they have corrected that with the 2016 products.  Apparently the majority of wireless drawbars don't fail.  Your new J may well be a good runner.  If you don't have a railroad find a friend or club that has one and run your locomotive for a couple of hours while it is under warrantee to make sure everything works smoothly.

With a100 or so MTH locomotives Joe's decision to go DCS is a logical one.  For someone just starting out in O scale 2 rail that wants to run  digital sound equipped locomotives from a variety of manufacturers I recommend DCC over DCS for reason of product choice and price.

I have 2 of the PS3 N&W J engines. One ran great out of the box and still does run great.

The other exhibited the symptoms Ed describes. Ed and I talked about solutions at length over the phone and went through many things to nail down a solution for that engine. One thing I did on both engines was beef up the electrical pickup on the right side of the engine while I had them apart to add weight.

Eventually I took the tender shell off and made sure connections were solid and when I touched a particular area, the engine ran, and ran fine after that for quite a while but the symptoms have resurfaced in the past week. When I give a touch to the drawbar under the tender it works again for a while. Sooo, I am waiting for new shorter drawbars to replace the hideous long ones and see where I stand after that. I believe the problem is in the drawbar connection somewhere.

With added weight the engines pull heavy 12 car passenger trains with some brass in there up a 3 percent grade.

2 of my G scale PS2 Challengers acted up a long time ago. They have the large loop tether that sticks way up. The cure was to resolder the joints at the tether, inside the engine. They looked good? They just didn't work for some reason. After simply reheating, the engines have run great ever since. That was maybe eight or so years ago? I forgot about it by now. With G scale, the board is in the engine so the tether only has a few active wires.

http://www.rayman4449.com/Tender_plug_problems.htm

PS3 wiring is more complex and the wires are finer. I'm not sure what the tether joints look like inside, but if a new connector tether does not fix it, you may try looking at the sockets on both ends for continuity. That would explain the touching thing? The cure has been posted here under MTH's column. Ray Manley told me about the Challenger years ago.

Brandon Cole posted:

 

I will probably have it displayed mostly, but want to be able to run it on my small 10x11 single loop layout that's in the works, don't make fun of my limited 2 rail space lol. 

Brandon. 

Heck No! I would never make fun of your limited space. In fact I think that it is awesome that you consider going 2 Rail in a small space. Most guys in this scale just give in and stick with the center rail so they can have sharper curves. I wish more folks thought along the same lines as you do.

Do you guys think that a shorter draw bar will lessen the torque on it or will it be the same regardless of length?

When I bought my SP Daylight the former owner threw in one of the PS3 drawbar sets. I was only going to use the 2 smaller ones. Chris or Ed do either of you guys need the other one?

GunrunnerJohn has said on this forum that some MTH locomotives only have a small piece of plastic to guard against solder pins touching the frame of the tender (I believe it is the tender side). If those pins touch they take out the board and it is a costly repair. He recommends using 3/4" shrink tubing. Just shrink it over the exposed pins for extra safety. I plan to do this to all of my MTH steam locomotives that have the drawbar. Just wanted to mention it since much of the topic is the drawbar.

Thanks for the drawbar offer Phil but I've put the J aside to do other projects until MTH delivers a warrantee replacement.  I had asked for a correct length 35mm replacement but was told under warrantee the only replacement I could get was the factory delivered 40mm ugly long one.  If the warrantee replacement drawbar corrects the performance issue I'll purchase a 35mm one.  If performance remains bad the whole locomotive is going back to MTH for service.  

There is one more thing for others that see this, the drawbar needs to snap fully into the receptacle at both ends. After inspecting that the pins are straight, align the drawbar, and you should feel a good snap when fully inserted. I got one used engine from a guy who swore off this style, and that was the only thing that was wrong. It still runs perfect for me.

 Now our grandkids, pretty much made that impossible because they broke the socket too. As I inspected it, I could see they cracked off one side of it.

I am expecting to not have an issue as long as I take care of the drawbar!  Are you guys able to run less than 54" radius? 

I really appreciate all the response here guys thank you. 

All my engines are 2rail MTH. I do have a third rail that I still have to put electronics in. All my engines run great. I have 65" radius which goes close to both walls in my basement but that's ok with me because I like big steam engines.  I do plan on buying more brass engines because I just really like the craftsmanship that goes into them  plus I like fixing stuff.

Brandon, stick with two rail you'll be happier. I know I am.  There are a lot great offerings for 2rail. 

I have a question for the guys having problems. Are you making sure the wire on the drawbar is touching the connection on the tender? That helps connect the ground between the engine and tender. Also I usually have the shorter draw bars in stock if anyone needs one.

Ralph

Ralph. Yes- making sure the ground wire under the drawbar was the first thing I checked.  I went beyond that and supplemented the spring ground wire with a temporary jumper wire between the frame of the engine and the left rail pickup screw on the tender.  Didn't hurt - didn't help.  The intermittent prroblem associated with the drawbar therefore must be with one of the other (6) circuit paths thru the drawbar.

Ralph4014 posted:

 

I have a question for the guys having problems. Are you making sure the wire on the drawbar is touching the connection on the tender? That helps connect the ground between the engine and tender. Also I usually have the shorter draw bars in stock if anyone needs one.

 

All my tethered engine problems are due to the soldered socket pins coming loose from the circuit board, as I stated.  When the failure occurs, I can easily rock the socket back and forth.  The temporary fix is to resolder the pins.  But as I said the protoypical close coupling of engine and tender puts too much of a strain on the socket and the joints eventually break.  Soft soldering electrical pins into a circuit board is not a mechanically robust system.  The long term solution is to either secure the socket by some means other than the pins soldered in a circuit board, or put some mechanical compliance in the system.

My one wireless drawbar locomotive has not had any electrical issues. Just the loco is too far from the tender, even with the shortest drawbar available.

Brandon,

I have a weaver brass pocono in 2 rail with DCS installed. It runs great, smokes like a big 4-8-4 should, Ralph switched the 2.0 to a 3.0 board and replaced the hump tether wire to a straight tether. I have a MTH F3 ABA and a SD70Ace in 2 rail with NO problems, just waiting on Ralph to let me know when to drop off my weaver pacific so he can install 3.0 with the straight diesel tether.  

Gave MTH a call today. The 2016 J won't have a glossy finish. Will be satin like the last one with the addition of Spirit of Roanoke on the cab and Wick Moormans voice in the PFA. Will fit my purpose good of modeling the excursion and not the N&W,even though my cars are all N&W. 

Brandon, I was in the basement today and my grandson decided he wanted to set up my O scale track. He made a circle of track of which one end was comprised of four 54" radius curves and four 49.5" radius curves. I don't even know which are which as I wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. I thought this was a perfect time to test the Sunset Mohawk. This was only the second time I ever ran it. I'm happy to say it made it through the curves without a hitch. Here's two pictures and this is before he finished the other end of the circle. 

here is my weaver pocono with DCS, runs just like the real thing.

...........don't make fun of my limited 2 rail space lol. 

I am wondering if these engines need DCS to operate correctly and If DCC is the problem? Joe I am guessing you have DCS by your signature? What are you using AC or DC power supply? 

Thanks everyone for the help and keep it coming. 

Brandon. 

You've got a bit more than I do!  You can do a lot wit that space if you make some realistic decisions.

Ok, I have 1 MTH engine ().  Admitting that may surprise some folks.  But, all of the electronics were stripped out of it and it was converted to straight DC operations.  Sold the electronics to Sethian,

I have not worked on a PS-3 2 Rail engine, but I am converting quite a few MTH Scale PS-2 3V 2 Rail - 3 Rail engine to PS-3 for the DCC capability for a club.  Here are some observations on the PS-2 3V engines.

First, if your inside the cab of the engine looking Forward, The Right side wheels have the spring loaded plunger assembly for picking up right rail power.  The left wheels are solid bearings and pick up left rail power which is Chassis ground.  At the engine, the problem is the red wire going to the tether is for center rail pickups which are removed and not used for 2 Rail.  The normal Black chassis ground wire IS NOT Chassis ground anymore.  It is Right wheel pickup.  Hence, the only Track Left Wheel power connects to the tender from the engine via the drawbar and spring for tether engines and spring for drawbar style engines.

WHat I do for the club that will not run these 3 rail anyway, is move the Red wire in the engine to the chassis ground screw.  This now provides left wheel power through the tether/drawbar wire.  Not just the drawbar spring connection.

For non switcher engines, you also have an axle strap on the trailing truck which is an alternate Right wheel pickup.  Make sure the strap actually is in contact with the axle.

Lastly at the engine,  I measure right wheel to right wheel continuity. I had one engine that only had 1 of the 3 powered drivers making contact.  What I found was 2 of the copper springs had overheated and annealed, and collapsed.  No longer providing pressure on the right bearing.  (Currently looking for a source for replacement springs).

Moving to the tender.  One truck as plastic bearing on both sides and use a axle strap to pickup right wheel power for the tender.  The other truck as metal bearing on left side to pickup chassis ground left wheel power.  Unfortunately the other right side uses plastic bearings.  Since the right wheels are insulated with plastic bushings, there really is no reason to use plastic bearings on the left wheel pickup truck.  They could be replaced with metal bearings to ensure the axle is making good contact with truck frame on both ends.

Inside the tender, the black wire going to switches from the tether harness is right wheel.  Gray is left wheel chassis ground.  The red wire on the end of the 3 Rail to 2 Rail switch is center rail pickup.  Since I repurpose this to be Left side chassis ground I remove it from the switch and move it to the Chassis Ground wire nut.

Again, axle straps on the tender need to contact the axle.

Switchers are a little different in that Pickup rollers are on the tender as the red wire is repurposed as a forward coupler.  Therefore no center rail pick up on the engine.  For 2 rail most remove the couplers and add kadee couplers.  So I repurpose the red wire by adding a jumper wire with terminal that I can attach to a ground screw.

Some pictures below.   G

Thanks for the informative post GGG.   My J is still of action.  Midge at MTH offered to ship me a 40mm PS3 wireless drawbar but I decided to wait for a 35mm one.  She said the draw bars are expected soon.  When it arrives I'll install it and see if it cures the electrical path issue.  If I decide to keep the J, and after it is of warantee, I'll install pickup wipers on the bbackside of the drivers as John Sethian has done.  I'd also consider replacing the drawbar with a solid metal one.  The electrical connections would be done with a straight through shrink wrap umbilical simulating the stoker auger pipe.   I've done this for  several DCC installations when a decoder won't fit in the boiler and it works quite well.

One common thread through posts on the forum is that MTH's wireless drawbar is inconvenient to connect and subject to failure due to stress on the small pins soldered to it.  We don't have more than anicdotal info on failure rates, but perhaps  MTH Should take a fresh look at the electrical path setup on their 2/3 steam locomotives (note this is not a DCS issue).

@Brandon Cole  there are definitely some very picky individuals here but speaking from experience, I own only a few MTH steamers and nearly all have been very good runners.  UP BigBoy, N&W A, K4, PRR T1, UP 9000, Erie Decapod.  Detail and scale fidelity can be a challenge for MTH but overall you get what you pay for.  Other NYSME members also have Reading T1, N&W J, SP AC6, CNJ BlueComet, PRR A5 and an interstate 2-8-2.  In all cases (except for my T1 and 9000... these are tight curve challenged modes 66" is not broad enough) all have run very well.  

These photos and drawings show how I wired up my MTH Mikado:

The stock MTH pickup (in 2 rail mode) which is a plunger pushing on the bearing. Not the axle directly.  In other words too many electrical joints

The spring does not conduct electricity that well (I measured > 25 ohms) so it quickly distorts due to heat

I replaced the spring with one made of phosphor bronze

And I added a wiper to the back side of the tire.  This is very easy to do

I added some more contacts, as shown.  "JDS" are my intials 

I have had no problems with this loco once I made these mods