Quote from: Fred2179 on October 10, 2025, 11:25:10 AMQuote from: dart-frog on October 05, 2025, 07:00:19 PMit is stuck on something that I can't see, perhaps a wire.That's the chuff triggers - there's a piece of plastic sticking up (down if you have the loco upside down,) with 2 brass fingers attached to it. You have to wriggle the bottom plate away from the chassis carefully so the chuff part slides out, and the wires attached to the fingers are under the axle and out the back. You can't remove the bottom plate unless you wriggle the wires under the axle and up to the bottom plate. Just push it to one side - see my photo.
Fred, Thanks for your advice. The situation was as you suggested and I've got the engine back in operation. :-)
Now, to my next question... I'm trying to figure out if the thing has DCC or is only "DCC-ready." The box says it's Bachmann part number 81398 but doesn't list it as DCC or DCC-ready. I can't find much info about this product. The "manual" has hardly any useful information either; there are some diagrams but they don't include electrical systems.
There are a two-pin and four-pin cable from the engine to the tender. When I run it on DC, it moves slowly. It does not respond to any commands from my digitrax DCS-51. There is nothing inside the tender, but that would just be the audio portion, correct? I cannot figure out how to get the engine apart to see what is inside, but what disassembly I did manage to do revealed a circuit board behind the aft boiler face (where the engineer's controls are).