TMCC engine taking off at full speed

dave,

your R2LC board is going bad. this is always the FIRST tmcc board to go, and will cost anywhere's from $50-100 to get a new one.

Try to do a factory reset, it's in the back of the atlas engine book. It should have 6-10 steps to do. If this does not fix the problem, then you will need a new board.

Thank you Pete.The engine is fairly new with only about an hour of run time on it and never experienced a short. So is there anything that would have caused this board to fail,like the battery or the speed step selection? I may have done something wrong. I don't have a cab1 remote. I use my MTH hand held remote to run it. Will I have any trouble doing a reset with the MTH remote?

dave,

you will need to do reset on a cab 1 remote. I see you are in ohio, see if anyone on the forum here can help you with a cab 1. Or try to find a hobby shop that can do a factory reset. If you can't find a cab 1, I have a extra one I could sell to you.

The R2LC board shouldn't cost more than $40-45, but that's not the only possibility.  If this locomotive has speed control, the board or flywheel sensor can be failing, that will cause the symptom you describe.

Just wanted to update you all on how I fared out with this engine. Reading your replies, I thought the first and easiest thing to do would be Pete's suggestion on the factory reset. Since I did not have a cab1 controller, I took it to a local train shop and had them perform the reset. Sure enough thats all it needed. The repair man there told me ( like John mentioned ) that when this happens its usually a flywheel issue. I'm sure glad it wasn't. I think I was pressing too many buttons trying to see what the MTH controller could make the train do and confused the heck out of the circuit board. So thank you very much guys and Pete, I do want to purchase your cab1. Please email me at zucalslgl@yahoo.com. 

Mental point to self, ALWAYS recommend the reset first!   It does affect the operation, I keep forgetting the simple solution.