Proto 3 on DCS won't run, etc

Always press READ on the remote and see what happens.  Lots of unexplainable bugs observed with PS3 .

@SIRT posted:

Always press READ on the remote and see what happens.  Lots of unexplainable bugs observed with PS3 .

I pressed Read and the name of my engine showed up. The I pressed the Thumb control and got Quickset speed. I don't want that.

I think I need a good Factory reset. I do Menu, Advanced, Reset Engine, Factory Reset.

Then I get Engine Will Be Removed after Reset.

Then it says Sel Eng to Reset. I do that, and then the name of my engine appears again showing SMPH: 0. It did not Remove the engine like it said it would.

then, what do I do to complete the Reset?

Arnold

OMG, success! I pressed Start Up and it worked.

I could have sworn I did that before and it did not work.

It was supposed to remove the engine and didn't.

No smoke though.

I pressed smoke button, nothing.

It went forward and reverse fine.

The it went over an O22, stopped (maybe momentary loss if power, still chugs, but stopped and no light.

Weird

This morning my Proto 3 44 tonner on DCS ran like a charm. No problems.

Did the exact protocol that I did a few minutes ago when I got it to work, and it has same problem again. Sits there, chugs, but no light, no smoke and won't run.

I bought it 3 days ago.

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

I pressed Read and the name of my engine showed up. The I pressed the Thumb control and got Quickset speed. I don't want that.

That is normal.  Quickset allows you to "jump" to a fixed speed (e.g. 12 MPH) by typing it in instead of rotating the thumbwheel upwards.  I seem to recall that there is a way to turn Quikset off because it can be rather annoying if you don't like it / use it.

To Disable it see this link and scroll down to Barry's post:  Quickset Speed feature | O Gauge Railroading On Line Forum (ogaugerr.com)

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

No smoke though.

I pressed smoke button, nothing.

It went forward and reverse fine.

The it went over an O22, stopped (maybe momentary loss if power, still chugs, but stopped and no light.

Weird

Is there a physical smoke switch on the bottom of the engine?  If so, it needs to be in the ON position.

@Brad Trout posted:

Is there a physical smoke switch on the bottom of the engine?  If so, it needs to be in the ON position.

Thanks Brad. It smoked before and I never touched the smoke switch on bottom, so that is not the problem.

Does sound like you are having a variety of "intermittent" issues.  Certainly could be a bad board or maybe just a loose wire somewhere, although I'm not very good at understanding the various components inside and what they do.

As with any computer, I find it's never a bad idea after making a big change (e.g. resetting the engine) to reboot everything.   First shut down the remote (so it "saves" to TIU).  Then remove power to TIU/track.  Wait 20 seconds, then restart in reverse order.

Did you go to menu > control > smoke volume > max. And still no smoke? You need at least 30 drops of smoke fluid.

@Brad Trout posted:

Does sound like you are having a variety of "intermittent" issues.  Certainly could be a bad board or maybe just a loose wire somewhere, although I'm not very good at understanding the various components inside and what they do.

As with any computer, I find it's never a bad idea after making a big change (e.g. resetting the engine) to reboot everything.   First shut down the remote (so it "saves" to TIU).  Then remove power to TIU/track.  Wait 20 seconds, then restart in reverse order.

That sounds promising, Brad. I will shut everything off for a while, reboot and report back.

@Chuck Sartor posted:

Did you go to menu > control > smoke volume > max. And still no smoke? You need at least 30 drops of smoke fluid.

I gave it 20 drops 3 days ago when I got it, and 5 drops a couple of times since then. It smoked great yesterday.

I will give it 15 drops next time I try to run it after I reboot everything. However, since there is also no headlight and I can't get it to run, I don't think it's the amount of smoke fluid in it.

After rebooting, still no luck.

I put power on track, turned on remote handheld, hit Menu, System, Engine Setup, Add Engine, Add MTH Engine, got Looking For Engine, got MTH Engine, hit MTH Engine, got the name of my Engine, hit Read, hit ENG, hit Start Up.

Only got chugging sounds. No light, no smoke, won't run.

Could it be the"wireless tether". There have been numerous posts about issues with these tether connection not being fully seated even though it appears to be, among other things.

https://ogrforum.com/...reless+drawbar+issue

Well that is a bummer!  Unfortunately as of late, I have been seeing a couple of new locomotives and upgrade kits the PS3 board die for no apparent reason.  You may have to return the engine if you can't recover it. Only speculation, but I wonder if MTH has got a new builder for the boards and the quality is not the same.

Arnold,

Does it run in conventional?

MELGAR

@MELGAR posted:

Arnold,

Does it run in conventional?

MELGAR

Melgar, I don't know because I understand that to run it conventional, I would need to disconnect the wires to, and remove, the TIU, and I prefer not to do that because it took me considerable time and effort to install the TIU.

@RickO posted:

Could it be the"wireless tether". There have been numerous posts about issues with these tether connection not being fully seated even though it appears to be, among other things.

https://ogrforum.com/...reless+drawbar+issue

Maybe

Can you put together a small test track? Just a 30 inch length of track and a transformer.

It does sound like a drawbar issue.

If you can determine if it operates in conventional mode, that would good to know for troubleshooting efforts.

Tom

Arnold, I was just going to suggest what Tom did about the test track.

When checking to see if Chuck's suggestion about making sure the smoke is set for Max, also sometimes it takes the smoke a minute to come out the stack.  I guess it has to heat up.  It sounds like you should have enough fluid even for a new engine that had a dry wick to start with.  Don't overfill with fluid.  I did that once, and had a mess to clean up inside the engine.

Rick has a good point too.  I once hadn't seated the drawbar tight enough.  Also, is there a stiff wire running along the top of the drawbar?  If so, you need to push it over past the seating hole so there is tension placed on it by the metal post that centers it.  I don't know why some engines have it and some don't, but if it isn't pushed over it evidently may not make contact well with the metal post.

Also Arnold, I had issues like yours when first starting out with DCS, and was ready to sell it and start buying LionChief engines, this was when the original LC first came out.  Then I started getting the hang of it.

Did you check to see if your signal strength is 10?  I also have intermittent issues with dirty track.

Good suggestions, Tom and Mark.

Before I read your posts, I put the piece of plastic on the drawbar to secure it in the socket, and tried to run it on a different section of my layout. This time, I got smoke and the headlight as well as the sounds, but still couldn't get it to run.

Now it works. I don't know exactly what I did.

I'm pretty sure that smoke in DCS has nothing to do with the switch or pot.

Glad to hear it.

MELGAR

Heres a link to a list of PS3 trouble shooting ideas, some of which have been  suggested.

https://mthtrains.com/sites/de...shooting%20chart.pdf

Remember it also takes 10-20-seconds for the supercapacitor in the tender to charge upon power up before the loco is ready for operation.

Unlike Lionel , where a battery is optional.

The battery in older MTH PS1-2 tenders, as well as the super capacitor in the newer PS 3 stuff, must be charged in order for things to function correctly.

Now, I will share my best recollection of what I did to get the engine to work, so others who may had had, or will have, a similar problem,  can benefit, as well as myself.

I think the major reason for the problem was the failure of the drawbar connection to be fully seated, and remain seated, in the tender socket. That problem was solved by attaching the small plastic piece (with the small white dot pointed up) that comes with the locomotive to fully seat the drawbar in the socket and keep it there.

Next, I put the engine on track located in a different section of my layout than where I initially had the problem, and applied about 10 volts of power to the track. Then, I pressed S5 button to turn on the remote handheld and then I pressed READ.

Here, my recollection is murky. I believe that what happened is that when I saw my engine's name on the screen, I pressed the green ENG, scrolled until the arrow pointed to my engine's name, pressed the thumbwheel, pressed the Start Up button, and the engine moved when I moved the thumb wheel down a notch.

Does the paragraph immediately above make sense? It's different from the manual.

Once I got the engine to work in all respects, I let it run throughout my layout for 10 minutes.

I will take a break and try to start it up again, and will take notes do I hopefully get it down pat. Arnold

From the link I posted above:

"My Steam engine has sounds, but no lights or motion."

"Check the drawbar connection. Without a secure connection between the boiler & tender, the separate circuit boards will not be able to communicate. Check the wires coming from the internal electronics to the drawbar. "

@RickO posted:

From the link I posted above:

"My Steam engine has sounds, but no lights or motion."

"Check the drawbar connection. Without a secure connection between the boiler & tender, the separate circuit boards will not be able to communicate. Check the wires coming from the internal electronics to the drawbar. "

Thanks Rick. Your suggestion was spot on. Having the drawbar fully seated, and using the smallkl plastic piece to keep it fully seated, in the tender socket was the primary remedy.

As far as the smoke, see if you can hear the fan in the smoke unit kick on. I occasionally get this weird thing where it's like a bubble forms in the smoke unit and the smoke can't get out. A quick rush of air over the stack will get it going. It's the same motion as if you were going to blow into the top of a bottle to get the whistle sound. I haven't figured out what causes it or anything but I have to do it regularly on two of my steamers.

As far as the rest of things...ohh man.

- Are you at 18-19 volts?

- Good signal on the track? (I think the remote can test it)

- Is the TIU-track connection good?

I don't know if that engine uses a battery but some of the protosound locos had a battery pack. That battery pack will cause all sorts of oddball problem that appear to be moving targets. You could look into that.

Do you have enough smoke fluid in the loco? When I started running my MTH locos with DCS, I found that refills were needed more frequently than when I ran them in conventional mode.

@BillYo414 posted:

I don't know if that engine uses a battery but some of the protosound locos had a battery pack. That battery pack will cause all sorts of oddball problem that appear to be moving targets. You could look into that.

ProtoSound 3.0 has a built in super capacitor instead of a battery, so he's all set in that regard.

@Brad Trout posted:

ProtoSound 3.0 has a built in super capacitor instead of a battery, so he's all set in that regard.

Lucky guy haha but good deal. Now I know.

My new MTH Proto 3 Center Cab 44 Ton Diesel runs flawlessly throughout my layout using DCS so I think the signal and TIU-track connection are good.

Haha well good to know that I'm not the only one!

And that's tricky business. I would go after the engine next. I didn't realize that another MTH engine was running well on the layout.

I share this for those just starting with DCS who may hit a snafu like I did recently, as described earlier on this thread.

This afternoon I started up this Railking Imperial Proto 3 B&O (President Washington version) several times using the DCS Remote Control Set, and the engine ran, sounded and smoked beautifully.

I simply followed the protocol in the DCS Operator's Manual and the advice offered on this thread, for starting up an MTH Proto 2 or 3 engine already added to my DCS, which is: put locomotive on track (on a different section of my layout than the section where I had the original problem); turn on Z4000 transformer and set voltage at 18 volts; turn on DCS Remote Unit; on Remote press READ (puts engine on active list) and see name of engine on Remote screen; press green ENG button (see arrow at left of engine name); press Thumbwheel; and press Start Up button.

Video of locomotive pulling Postwar 2400 series passenger cars appears below:

Arnold

You shouldn't have to push Read all the time, unless you make the engine inactive on the remote. I just turn on my remote, engines you were running previously come up, I select the engine,turn on the transformer with power to the track, and press startup. Most of the time I just turn off the power when I'm done without pressing shutdown.