I have a set of MTH 30-20224-1 Northern Pacific F3s with PS3 that I've owned since new. The PS3 board has failed for the third time, and I am outside of the 90 repair warranty. It has previously been back to MTH twice for board failures.
I've always ran this set through a Rev. I TIU powered by a Z1000 brick under DCS version 4.20. It has never been derailed or run hard.
The first failure occurred with about 4 hours on the chronometer. Smoke poured out from between the front truck and frame of the power unit with a burnt odor during a lap around my layout.
So I sent it to MTH and they replaced the PS3 board, front coupler, and a harness.
Once it came back, I put about another 2 hours on it before it just stopped completely dead with no lights or sound.
Back it went for another board replacement.
Due to being busy, I had to let it sit. I started it up the other day to discover that it would not move forward once I scrolled the thumbwheel up to about 10 SMPH. The PS3 system played the sound like it was moving, but it wouldn't move.
I pressed DIR, and scrolled up and it moved briefly in reverse before I heard a sputtering sound from the speaker and it went dead again.
During all of these failures, the breaker in the Z1000 brick never opened, although I know it is functional.
I've been running MTH products since 1998, DCS and PS2 since 2002, but I am now very frustrated at this situation.
Does anyone have any advice? I really liked these F3s with their matching passenger cars.
Thanks,
Jim
