I've repaired many many engine's in my time, but I think this one takes the prize!!! This is a Lionel TMCC ESE steam engine, item 6-38000. When i took it out of the box it had a bad burn smell, I was so curious I had to open it up immediately. Here's what I found, fried to a crisp.
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WOW! Someone did a great job of letting the magic smoke out...
How in the world is that even possible?
That wouldn't happen to be my engine would it Alex?
LOL I can see the owner now.
"WOW this thing really smokes great, awesome... huh I wonder why it stopped?"
Makes me glad I yanked all my smoke units out 
Wow, that is fried to a crisp. Well at least its in good hands! time for a GRJ smoke upgrade board. 
More details, please. You got this from UPS and opened it....you had it in storage for six months and got it out of your basement for the first time
, or ???
It appears what cooked was the voltage regulator and then sent full 18 volts to the smoke unit ?? I have this engine and am very curious as to what caused it!!
Doug
Wow, that one takes the cake.
I just spoke to Alex and yes....that is my engine! I was running it at the club on Wednesday testing it out before our show this Sunday. I hadn't run in in about a year. It was running for about an hour at 18 volts from a Z4000 when I heard a loud crack/snap sound. Almost sounded like a circuit breaker tripping. The sound and smoke stopped but it continued to run. I tried resetting it through the CAB-2 but no response. I then noticed it was starting to smell and pulled it from the track. In talking it out with Alex I realized it had been smoking as well as I've ever seen a Lionel engine smoke. In retrospect that was probably an indicator that the voltage regulation was going south.
Well, it's in good hands now and will be ready to run in due time.
Chris,thanks for the reply. I really want to know what Alex finds so I can curb your results. She is in good hands now and will return better than ever I'm sure!
Doug
Alex is the guy to do the work, never have been let down.
Wow - including mine, this is the third thread this week about burnt electronics/ faulty regulators, tis the season I guess! Let us all remember- where there is really good smoke, there is probably fire!
I've had one come in for repair that was like this. The smoke wadding was hard Charcoal, not the just burned and crispy.
The guy said it smoked too good for about 20 seconds... You could still smell it in the shell even after replacing all the charred parts.
Jim
Holy smokes!! That sucker is fried! Cool to see the pictures. I sure hope it fixes right up and hits the rails soon. Chris, I feel your pain on this one.
Gentlemen,
Not something I want to see on one of my Engines that is for sure.
PCRR/Dave
Bring on the new Legacy ESE.
Chris, BTW that engine makes a great DCS conversion. I have a few TMCC engines. If they set for a long time I always reprogram the R2LC with the AUX code before using them. Nothing is documented on that. TMCC is an older system and like ourselves, time does funny things. Have you checked into Ben leaving a beer can on the track?? I have never been a fan of that regulator and have replaced many. Chris, it happens, nothing anyone did. Alex should be able to put it back together.
Ben.........beer..........track........... Now that's funny.
Marty Fitzhenry posted:Bring on the new Legacy ESE.
Chris, BTW that engine makes a great DCS conversion. I have a few TMCC engines. If they set for a long time I always reprogram the R2LC with the AUX code before using them. Nothing is documented on that. TMCC is an older system and like ourselves, time does funny things. Have you checked into Ben leaving a beer can on the track?? I have never been a fan of that regulator and have replaced many. Chris, it happens, nothing anyone did. Alex should be able to put it back together.
No beer can on the track. To be honest, Ben's a bottle guy. There were however a couple of DCS engines running. I suspecting they were the culprit! 
Last year on Christmas eve I had a flame coming out of my smoke stack, and the damage resulted in a new smoke unit which Alex Fixed. Nothing compared to this melt down.
If you need engine servicing, Alex is DA MAN!!!
See you tomorrow to drop off your Aux Tender
Steve
ALEX will get to the bottom of this, you better betcha he will.
Marty Fitzhenry posted:Bring on the new Legacy ESE.
Chris, BTW that engine makes a great DCS conversion. I have a few TMCC engines. If they set for a long time I always reprogram the R2LC with the AUX code before using them. Nothing is documented on that. TMCC is an older system and like ourselves, time does funny things. Have you checked into Ben leaving a beer can on the track?? I have never been a fan of that regulator and have replaced many. Chris, it happens, nothing anyone did. Alex should be able to put it back together.
Hi Marty, i would think Ben might have left a beer on the track, LOL. Marty you just taught me something,never thought of reprogramming the engine since it was sitting so long. This just might be the issue. I'm not a fan either of this voltage regulator, it would be much better to bypass all of those smoke electronics and install a 27 OHM unit with a 20 OHM resistor and GRJ's super chuffer.
Alex
I will start getting into this engine this coming week. I will let you all know my findings after some troubleshooting this. But in all honesty with all these boards so burnt and fried, there's really nothing to troubleshoot. It's going to be a case of replacing all boards and some new wiring. I will take a look around and anyway. Stay tuned !!!
Alex
Take a regulator and cover it in heatshrink and don't allow natural circulation or frame heatsink probably doesn't work in that regulators favor. An improvement might be to heat sink it.
The other issue is if the element input side was shorting to the smoke unit case causing a 0 ohm short. That would overload that regulator and if it fails shorted that would cause the issue. Though you would think a breaker would open somewhere. I have had Lionel engines where the element short to housing was the issue. G
That engine belonged to Cheech and Chong
I immediately thought of a line from the more recent Davy Crocket movie with Johnny Cash playing the older Davy. The line was from a scene where one of Davy's fellow volunteers was wounded by an Indian. His line: I'm gutshot Davy!
Don
Wish they always smoked that good.Nick
Wow, that's crazy
Send the pictures to Mike R. @ Lionel - Maybe his team would like to see this.
Yepper....the smoke's been let outa that one, for sure, for sure.
As they say at KFC, 'That one's not original recipe
.....that one's EXTRA crispy!'
That'd be enough to ruin a good day.
These types of catastrophic failures should not happen but the engine could be saved by gutting and replacing with an electronic e unit, horn/sound board and simple smoke generator. That's probably the most economical way to fix it. If you want a replacement TMCC board, Jim Policastro had a bunch of them that he was selling at York and may still have a few.
At first I thought that junior had plugged it into 120v. Sorry this happened to you, Chris!
This, sadly, isn't that uncommon. I've seen a number of smoke regulators fail, and several of them have done exactly what you see. The triac shorts, and puts full 18 volts on the 6 or 8 ohm resistor in the smoke unit. The result is 40-50 watts of power in the smoke unit instead of the design of 5-7 watts. The result is predictable. New smoke regulator, new smoke PCB, resistor, and wick. On one I even had to replace one of the connectors that plug into the smoke unit as it was melted as well.
Years ago I purchased a new , in the box, Lionel JLC engine to complete that set (circa 1985). Just after commenting "what a great smoker it was" I had an honest to goodness "stack fire" with a 4-5 inch flame! Fortunately, there were no flammables such as paper tunnels or dried out Christmas trees, and I was there to deal with this conflagration. At that time I did the Lionel repairs for the store where I acquired this engine. This one went back to Fundimentions and was hopefully placed on the scrap line. Happy Holiudays to All ! 
Marty,
How do you perform the reset?
"I have a few TMCC engines. If they set for a long time I always reprogram the R2LC with the AUX code before using them. Nothing is documented on that."
You manual has the single or 2 digit code that reprograms the R2LC features. It is similar to changing an ID, with 2 extra steps for setting the code. It usually comes right after changing an ID in the instruction manual. G
Thank you!
Did you try turning it on and off again?
Maxrailroad posted:Did you try turning it on and off again?
We even tried it on another transformer. Same result...smells funny!
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