I recently acquired an F3, A-B-A, Premier Set 20-2618-1, from 2005 catalog with a 3 volt PS2 board. Chronometer = 20 minutes, Odometer = 2.8 miles. It lived it's life pretty much in the box. Not a spec of dust on it. First thing I did was take the lead A unit, charge the battery, oil the pickup rollers and added smoke fluid. Then put it on the tracks by it's self and it performed flawlessly. Next I looked over the B unit and while oiling the axles I noticed a purple wire had come off the #2 tether pin on the socket board. So I set it aside to repair at another time and moved onto the rear A unit that has the slave board. After adding smoke fluid and oiling the pickup rollers I attached it to the lead A unit. When I applied track power to the A-A set, the slave engine started spinning all it's axles. I quickly killed the power. So to determine if it was an issue with communication from the lead engine's PS2 board to the slave board, I removed the lead A unit from the tracks and applied power to the slave engine. It took off backwards at full speed and once again I quickly cut the power. My first thought was pinched motor wires, so I removed the shell and spread out all the wiring, but couldn't find wire damage. I also made sure all the wire plugs were seated in their sockets properly. Once again I then tried applying power to it on the tracks with the shell off and the wires spread out away from the chassis and it took off the same as before, but this time, after traveling about 10 feet, it blew a 10 amp fuse I have installed in the wiring going to the tracks. My question, could the purple wire being disconnected on the B unit have caused a component to burn out on the slave board at the original onset of this issue?
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