(LGB) 25554 - reporting from the wild side

 This is a story straight from Klaus' workshop

Tom calls and starts ranting:" I have an (^***&#)-  engine here that runs only for 3 feet and then stops. For no obvious reason. It doesn't display headlights and the sound is not working". 

 Klaus asks:" What type of engine is it?"

Tom:" (LGB) 25554- the green one"

Klaus now asks Tom what kind of power supply he is using (standard analog 5 Amp). This excluded a motor going bad which would have overpowered a starter set throttle. As Tom didn't want to mess with it he shipped the engine to Klaus.

(LGB) 25554 by Maerklin/Simba-Dickie

                                                                                                  

The engine arrived three days later and was put on the bench right away. With the engine on its side Klaus connected regular DC power to the power shoes of the front motor block. Then, gradually, he raised the voltage having a close eye on the Amperage. Only to discover that the engine did not pick up any power on the front motor block. The same test on the rear motor block revealed a strange behavior:

Klaus' precision testing device - the voltage generator

the wheels were turning and when the voltage was raised above 4 Volts the Amperage would shoot beyond 4 Amps. Klaus immediately stopped the test to prevent further damage to the engine. Now Klaus opened up the engine to find a strange configuration of electronics in the rear body.

There was a soundboard (MTS) mounted to the base plate held by only one screw and an MTS onboard decoder mounted to a lead weight. Turned out it was the lead weight of a Forney. Now, this was something special.

Klaus has never seen a White Pass & Yukon engine with this kind of interior. The suspicion arose that this is an engine made in China. Another hint was the cover of the engine's switches and volume control: normally it takes a bit of an effort to remove the cover but this cover nearly fell into his lap. Which points to a different kind of plastic that LGB used in Germany.

Meanwhile a bit of research revealed that the engine was made somewhere in 2010 by Maerklin possibly while the takeover by Simba-Dickie took place. That meant China was still a possible manufacturing place before Simba-Dickie turned to open up Gyor/Hungary.

Back at the workshop the next step was to isolate those motor blocks and test them individually with regular DC without having the internal electronics of the locomotive connected. The front motor block did not pick up any power and only the motor worked. The rear motor block picked up power with the motor being OK but the motor would even run when power was only supplied to the power shoes. As this was a DCC motor block track power and motor leads should have been totally isolated from each other. So question was why did the motor run with power supplied to the power shoes? There was only one solution: a massive short between the motor leads and track power pick-up.

Opening up the lower lid of the rear motor block revealed two dislocated power bus bars. The bus bars were made out of sheet metal which was about half the thickness as the regular LGB bars would be. So it was possible that the lower lid was closed with the power bars dislocated and nobody noticing it. The imprints in the bus bars that were made by the lid and the body of the motor block confirmed this theory. With the lower lid screws being untouched it was clear that this happened in the factory. Unfortunately it also proved that there was no quality control performed in the factory.
Basically the same condition was found in the front motor block.

Klaus repaired the motor blocks and inspected the onboard decoder which turned out to be fried and

the yellow line circles the burnt decoder part

was replaced as well. Klaus programmed a new onboard decoder to match the locomotive and reassembled the engine.

After a quick test drive in DCC and regular DC the 'patient' was released as healed and shipped back to Tom - working just fine.