Hello all..before I get into my problem, Great board..My boys LOVE looking at your pics!!

Now on to the problem... I bought my 4 YO son A bachmann large scale Night before Christmas set last year for Christmas. He was so happy he started to cry when he opened it..BY FAR the BEST moment of my life so far!! Too bad that "Santa" brought him a train that was broken in about 10 places and he couldn't use it

After a call to Bachmann (Santa's elves) they had me send the train back to them and they replaced the set..AWESOME SERVICE!!!

Now I take the set out of storage and set it up and everything is running like a champ, for about an hour..then it stops and won't go anymore.

I did notice the drive wheels don;t turn when you push or pull the engine,  is this normal that they only turn when the motor turns them or could this mean a motor/gear problem?

How do I tell if the controller is at fault? Is there a testing procedure to narrow this down? I'm leaning towards the controller but not sure..please help...my kids deserve to have this train work for christmas at least once!!!

Thanks,

Mike