I immediately had issues with a new GP40 with DCC on board.  Was very loud, and you would hit the throttle it would stall for a second, then jump.  And at anything but top speed it would run at very inconstant speed.  My other DCC loco ran fine on same track, so I know the loco was bad.  Anyway,  sent in warranty card within a week.  Within a few weeks sent loco back with copy of receipt.  I gave them my number and email, but never heard anything.  After a month began to wonder if they got it.  At 6 weeks, it finally came back.  I went to test it and...surprise, exact same thing.  They sent an invoice that said something about replacement GP40 DCC bla bla bla  N/C Ginny.  I have no idea what N/C means, but they obviously didn't fix it.  Does it mean Not Covered?  It was brand new and I sent warranty card AND copy of the receipt.  Its difficult for me to make a call during the day, so I emailed them 2 days ago and told them everything above.  And true to Bachmann form, I still don't have a reply.  I have never seen such poor customer service in my life.   At this point I have no confidence whatsoever it will ever be fixed by them.  Even if they do, it has already been 2 months and I've had to spend money to ship it to them once, and would have to do it again.  I know I'm not adding anything as this board is already full of Bachmann customer service horror stories.  But I'd be remiss not to warn others.  Oh, and by the way, the first time I contacted them about sending it back - I filled out the service request form three times on their website, then sent 2 emails and waited 2 or 3 days before I got a response.   In the last email I told them it was the 5th time I'd tried to contact them.  When they finally responded there was no "Sorry about the slow response..." or "We apologize for the delay in getting back to you..."  It was just "Send your loco to bla bla bla.  Here are the prices for repair bla bla bla.  If I was running a company that treated customers that way, I'd fire anybody who treated a customer like that

I have the Nickel Plate Road GP30 DCC loco.  Got it recently and until a couple days ago only had about 30 minutes of run time.  The day before yesterday I decided I would let it run for a while to break it in.  I set it about half throttle and ran it for 3.5 hours straight.  It was very uneventful and I could already hear a reduction in engine noise.  The next night I figured I'd do it again.  But this time, after about 1.5 hours it came to a very brief stop, then took off again.  Then a few minutes later, it did the exact same thing.  Then again.  The stops are VERY brief.  As soon as it stops it starts again.  I put a lighted car on the track to see if the voltage was dropping.  Well the next time the loco stopped, the light did not even flicker.  The next thing I did was run my FT-A at the same time.   I did that for about 10 minutes but the GP30 never paused again.  I think I will try that again tonight.  My track is very clean (just cleaned it), and the pauses don't always happen in the same place.  Very strange.  It does seem like it has to run a while before it starts pausing.  Is there any sort of protection built into the decoder to shut down when too hot?  Even that doesn't make much sense because it can pause once, then not pause again for another 5 minutes. 
Guessing I might have to send it to Bachmann.  This would be 2 out of 3 locos I've had issued with.  The last one just flat-out died after about 3 hours of runtime (not even continuous).   Starting to think the Bachmanns are junk?

I'd like to install a decoder in an older Athearn Pa-1, but I don't have a programmer.  If I install the "Bachmann�44913 EZ Command Decoder/Harness", can I program it with just my  Bachmann EZ command controller?   Here is a link to a place that sells them.

http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/Bachmann_DCC_Decoders_s/2209.htm

Thanks