ICG/SOU
HO & O (3-rail) trainman
It hasn't happened here that I've seen, but in the shop we've had a couple of customers of late that called with issues and it was very difficult to give support over the phone when the customer had difficulty giving us the right or relevant information. If you have to ever call in to a shop or the manufacturer, it will help a lot to consider these steps:
1) If you broke it, I don't care. There's no judgment here, because we've all broken stuff before, either because we didn't know what we were doing, or we got careless or accidentally did it. If you broke it, let us know. We're adults, and it's going to help us all more if we know what we're dealing with.
I had a guy who tried to take the rear truck off an Athearn Dash 9 by pulling REAL HARD on the rear truck (or using a lever to do it). He broke the drive shaft, snapped the worm gear cover off, and lost part of the worm gear in his carpet. Yeah, not the right way, but don't claim that you bought it that way. It doesn't help us help you fix it.
2) If you do an install yourself, and the locomotive was working and now doesn't, then step back and look at your work. Most of the time you have forgotten to do a step (like wire it up correctly....Athearn uses black wire everywhere, and it can be easy to swap track pickups).
3) If you call for help, tell us what locomotive it is, which decoder it is, who installed it, the system you're running on, what you've done, and what it is not doing right. Most of the time it's a simple fix, as companies do test their decoders when they leave the factory, and for the most part, I'd say better than 9 out of 10, nothing is wrong with the decoder.
4) If you've called the manufacturer before calling us, then let us know that up front, so we know what they've told you. We do a better job if we're all on a same sheet of music.
5) If you've programmed it and it doesn't work right, resetting the decoder to CV8 = 8 will reset it to factory settings. If it still doesn't work right, then be prepared to bring it in.
6) If you're doing the install yourself, read and follow the wiring diagram. I know the first time I used a TSU-AT1000 board in an Athearn, I didn't pay attention to the wiring diagram, and wired the 1.5v bulbs to the light pads just like I do with the TSU-GN1000. When those little bulbs blow out, it's so fast you'll usually miss it. I blew out the factory bulbs, as well as one full set (4) of Minatronics replacements before I caught on. I know, we're guys, and we usually don't read instructions, but they do help.
7) Most manufacturers will post their manuals online. If you are so inclined, print out the Soundtraxx Users Guide as well as the Technical Reference (they are about 60 pages each), and at least flip through it. If you can use your throttle on your DCC system, you can likely program all the appropriate CVs for special lighting effects.
8) MTH locomotives on MRC systems don't seem to run well together. This isn't a law of nature, but when we have a customer with a programming or consisting issue, we've found more often than not that MTH and MRC don't play trains well.
9) In Proto 2K locomotives, they tend to use all the colors of the NMRA practice (red and black, track; orange and grey, motor; white, blue, and yellow for headlight and rearlights, respectively), but the wire color doesn't always get used for where it should. I was in an E8A unit, and although the trucks are wired for red and black, one truck was wired backwards (red wire was to left side of truck) because someone at the factory just wires trucks, regardless of orientation. The way they put the trucks in, sometimes the wire placement gets twisted, and I ended up taking the trucks apart to wire them properly.
If you've got a short and aren't sure why, then try and trace all the wires out from where they connect from one component to another. In steam locos this can be time consuming.
10) Never, ever be too proud to ask for help. We're all enthusiasts about trains, and we're all at different levels of knowledge or skill. We all have something to offer another, and what you may not know today, you can help someone else tomorrow.
11) If you bring in your loco for work, please reassemble it, and put it back in the original packaging. If there are parts you didn't put back on (like couplers and coupler boxes), please point that out. When we get a box of parts, there's no real guarantee, even though we'll really try hard to, that you'll get everything back, and there's no way for us to know if we lost it or if you didn't bring it. Put it back in the original packaging so that it is protected.
Recently this customer brought us a really nice Alco PA to have sound put in, but it was completely loose. Luckily nothing got broken or missing off of it, but it's difficult to store unboxed locomotives in the shop without something breaking off.
More stuff to come as I think of it.
1) If you broke it, I don't care. There's no judgment here, because we've all broken stuff before, either because we didn't know what we were doing, or we got careless or accidentally did it. If you broke it, let us know. We're adults, and it's going to help us all more if we know what we're dealing with.
I had a guy who tried to take the rear truck off an Athearn Dash 9 by pulling REAL HARD on the rear truck (or using a lever to do it). He broke the drive shaft, snapped the worm gear cover off, and lost part of the worm gear in his carpet. Yeah, not the right way, but don't claim that you bought it that way. It doesn't help us help you fix it.
2) If you do an install yourself, and the locomotive was working and now doesn't, then step back and look at your work. Most of the time you have forgotten to do a step (like wire it up correctly....Athearn uses black wire everywhere, and it can be easy to swap track pickups).
3) If you call for help, tell us what locomotive it is, which decoder it is, who installed it, the system you're running on, what you've done, and what it is not doing right. Most of the time it's a simple fix, as companies do test their decoders when they leave the factory, and for the most part, I'd say better than 9 out of 10, nothing is wrong with the decoder.
4) If you've called the manufacturer before calling us, then let us know that up front, so we know what they've told you. We do a better job if we're all on a same sheet of music.
5) If you've programmed it and it doesn't work right, resetting the decoder to CV8 = 8 will reset it to factory settings. If it still doesn't work right, then be prepared to bring it in.
6) If you're doing the install yourself, read and follow the wiring diagram. I know the first time I used a TSU-AT1000 board in an Athearn, I didn't pay attention to the wiring diagram, and wired the 1.5v bulbs to the light pads just like I do with the TSU-GN1000. When those little bulbs blow out, it's so fast you'll usually miss it. I blew out the factory bulbs, as well as one full set (4) of Minatronics replacements before I caught on. I know, we're guys, and we usually don't read instructions, but they do help.
7) Most manufacturers will post their manuals online. If you are so inclined, print out the Soundtraxx Users Guide as well as the Technical Reference (they are about 60 pages each), and at least flip through it. If you can use your throttle on your DCC system, you can likely program all the appropriate CVs for special lighting effects.
8) MTH locomotives on MRC systems don't seem to run well together. This isn't a law of nature, but when we have a customer with a programming or consisting issue, we've found more often than not that MTH and MRC don't play trains well.
9) In Proto 2K locomotives, they tend to use all the colors of the NMRA practice (red and black, track; orange and grey, motor; white, blue, and yellow for headlight and rearlights, respectively), but the wire color doesn't always get used for where it should. I was in an E8A unit, and although the trucks are wired for red and black, one truck was wired backwards (red wire was to left side of truck) because someone at the factory just wires trucks, regardless of orientation. The way they put the trucks in, sometimes the wire placement gets twisted, and I ended up taking the trucks apart to wire them properly.
If you've got a short and aren't sure why, then try and trace all the wires out from where they connect from one component to another. In steam locos this can be time consuming.
10) Never, ever be too proud to ask for help. We're all enthusiasts about trains, and we're all at different levels of knowledge or skill. We all have something to offer another, and what you may not know today, you can help someone else tomorrow.
11) If you bring in your loco for work, please reassemble it, and put it back in the original packaging. If there are parts you didn't put back on (like couplers and coupler boxes), please point that out. When we get a box of parts, there's no real guarantee, even though we'll really try hard to, that you'll get everything back, and there's no way for us to know if we lost it or if you didn't bring it. Put it back in the original packaging so that it is protected.
Recently this customer brought us a really nice Alco PA to have sound put in, but it was completely loose. Luckily nothing got broken or missing off of it, but it's difficult to store unboxed locomotives in the shop without something breaking off.
More stuff to come as I think of it.
