MTH Premier UP Challenger Losing Communication with DCS

THat is odd.  Wire routing in tender near the dcs transformer coil possibly but may need a new tender board.  G

I had this issue, not with this particular engine, but with a PS3 diesel. A forum search pulled up a post about the red power wire being too close to something on the board. I cut the zip tie holding all wires together and pulled the red power wire away from the board and out of the wire bundle. The darn engine has worked flawlessly since. The experts here will know more about the specific issue. Migh be worth a try??

Mike

Thanks for the replies.

@GGG I'll check the wiring around the coil.  That would be on the main board in the tender, correct?  Certainly hope it isn't the board...seems a pity to replace the board on such a new engine, especially since it works flawlessly most of the time.

@LT1Poncho Interesting, sounds like the same suggestion as GGG.  I'll give it a look over.

Yes tender.  The only other thing that struck me is the DCS/DCC switch and wiring.  It is a 2 pin to the tender board.  If the switch or wiring is intermittent.  G

I suppose as a test, if you flip the DCS/DCC switch on a DCS engine while it is operating, then switch it back, should it require a power down and restart to get the engine to work properly and respond to DCS? If so, that would kind of point to something with the switch or its wiring since those are the symptoms I’m having.  If not, it would tend to point to something else.  I will look into it once I have the chance.

According to MTH you can damage the Tender board if trying to operate in DCS with the switch in DCC.    Just test continuity of the switch and wires making sure connector fully seat and no visual damage to wires.  G

If you have a meter check continuity of each pin in the drawbar , sometimes the solder connection isnt that great from the factory.

I had a few that came in to the Columbia location when I worked there.  Ended rerouting the wires in the tender.  Do a signal test at various points on the layout.

@GGG Will do.  Thanks for the suggestion.  Didn't know it could damage anything but I'll definitely avoid that.

@rustycoupler I already swapped out the drawbar with a known good one and it didn't help.

@Jon G I was actually doing a signal text once when it cut out.  Went straight from 8-9 strength to losing connection with the engine.  By saying you had a few, do you mean this run of Challengers?  With the older thread on this forum about this exact same issue with one of these 2017 Challengers, I'm thinking it may be an issue plaguing this run.

It was probably 5-6 years ago.  Not a widespread problem.  I ended up moving the wire harness to the other side of the board.

I've seen this a few times on these. Moving wires didn't help much. There's a random weird issue in the chain file. Reload the one here and the issue goes away:

20-3687-1 | MTH ELECTRIC TRAINS (mthtrains.com)

The Premier SP Cab Forwards built around the same time also had this issue. Reloading the chain file cures it.

@Lou1985 Good suggestion, thanks.  I noticed the files are a lot newer than the engine, so they have presumably been updated since the engine was produced.  I'll give it a whirl.

Unrelated, but I've noticed the steaming whistle on this one only works when using the quillable whistle, unlike the newer MTH steam engines I have that do it when pressing the standard whistle button as well as the single, double, and triple toots and grade crossing whistle.  Any idea if the new chain files would fix that?

Update: I flashed the engine with the updated chain files last night.  After proceeding to run the engine for about an hour, the problem has not returned.  I will continue to monitor and post if the issue returns, but it appears the new chain files fixed the glitch completely.

As an added bonus, the updated files support activating the steaming whistle any time the whistle is blown like the latest MTH steamers, and not only when using the quillable whistle.  Killed two birds with one stone!

Thank you all for your help.

Good to know.  It would be nice if MTH left notes in the SF record for what they are fixing with an updated Flash code or Sound File.  G