So as the title says, I (or more specifically my much younger brother) has a RailKing starter set (30-4226-1) with an engine that does not work and is presumed to be "dead" and has been sitting for a couple of years. When he was younger he did a number on the engine, first by opening it up without supervision and messing with the plugs and wires on the boiler board. He then proceeded to run the engine without the shell on and claims he saw a spark from inside the engine during a derailment and he claims it was on or near the boiler board. He also said the transformer circuit breaker (he was using my Z4000 conventionally at the time) came on and he immediately powered it off.
Upon further inspection, by removing the boiler board and motor and moving most wires out of the way, I discovered a wire that appears to have melted coming from the front pickup roller which may have been the true origin of the spark. Attached is a picture of said wire.
Additionally, the engine is on its second wireless drawbar, although that appears to be fine. He also stuffed something (pieces of shredded paper I think) in the smoke unit and accidentally pulled off one of the wires. I simply plan to resolder the wire and rewick the smoke unit after cleaning it out. Also, a minor note, the zip tie securing the wires was moved off of them, hence the mess in the photo.
As for the wire issue, however, what is the best way to go about fixing this? Ideally there would be a "plug and play" (or at least screw on and play in this case) replacement for the melted wire. Other than soldering in new wire, is there a replacement wire or harness available from MTH? I also don't know if the boiler board is bad or if the PS3 board is bad. I want to rule out everything else before the PS3 board simply due to its cost. Luckily, he did not open up the tender and the PS3 board appears (at least visually) to be okay although I have no way of testing it myself until I can power up the engine.
Also, is there an exploded view with parts labeled of the PS3 starter set 2-8-0s? I found one for the PS2 ones but I can't seem to find one for the PS3 ones.
Any help or advice on this repair is greatly appreciated.
Edit: I now know the wire is the wire from the center rail contact. I found a replacement on MTH’s website with the connectors. If this is all that I need to attempt to power the engine up, then I will get it. Also, could the engine be powered up with just one contact connected, just for testing purposes? I would, of course, remove the damaged wire first.
Edit: I put the engine back together with just one of the contacts using the other remaining wire. I doubled checked all connections to the boiler board and from the drawbar. I left the smoke unit disconnected just for testing purposes. No lights came on but I did hear a buzzing noise from the tender speaker, not the board itself.
At this point, am I safe to assume it’s a bad PS3 tender board?
Also, I’m no ASC, but would anyone be willing to exchange (for whatever the new one costs) the presumably dead board for a working one?
