I agree when you decide to go DCC/sound you should buy a locomotive already equipped, instead of struggling with all the unknowns involved with decoder and the speaker installation when you're just starting out in the hobby ..... stuff that gives fits to even more advanced modelers. You can then run your train, and work on the other engine at your leisure. 

The first thing is that it's 99% certain that, unless any of those trains are very large scale toys from the 1930s or so, they are worth very little.  The myth persists that old toy trains are worth their weight in  gold and it is generally false.  Very few of the truly collectible toys from the 1930s are in circulation anymore, they've mostly entered collections.

Bachmann is only one of many vendors that sold Model trains over the years and the odds are that your stuff is spread out over many, many vendors, with numbers of them certainly out of business today.  Even photographs might prove not very useful in identification. 

One thing that is certain is that the rubber band drive engines are by Athearn.  The rubber band drive was a failed experiment in train set economy in the early 1960s.  The rubber bands did not last long and once they broke, most of those engines ended up in the trash.  They are hardly worth anything at all today.  Even when operable, they were not suited to serious model railroading, they were made to go very fast to entertain children.

I don't know how much stuff you have, but your best bet is to personally be in touch with some veteran Model Railroader who can help you identify everything and see if there's any value to any of it.  Maybe you can go to a train show somewhere and inquire around.  Train shows are always full of individuals selling assorted old low value stuff just like you have, the only difference is that they know what it's worth, which isn't very much so the prices are low, sometimes $2 to $5 a car at best.

I'm truly sorry having to be the bearer of negativity, but I believe this is what you're looking at.

Quote from: BobZ on December 09, 2024, 08:30:03 AMI just did a search on ebay and found them. HO Scale Oil Bunkers for Model Train Railroad by Century Foundry (2101). 4 in a pack for $11. Check them out.

If I'm not mistaken, those look more like 5 gallon oil cans rather than a tender oil bunker.

Quote from: BobZ on December 09, 2024, 08:30:03 AMI just did a search on ebay and found them. HO Scale Oil Bunkers for Model Train Railroad by Century Foundry (2101). 4 in a pack for $11. Check them out.

Please post the web address.  Thank you

A very long time ago Bachmann also put oil bunkers on a couple of engines with the USRA tenders, the consolidation and the KCS version of the light 2-10-2.  Whatever consolidation that came with it was so far back that it dates my reentry in the Model Railroad in 2007.  So I don't know which road name it was.

But I do have the KCS engine with the oil bunker, and someone gave me a spare KCS tender shell with the bunker, so I have one to use as a pattern for the future.

Everyone in the world thinks that all steam locomotives were coal burners, ie constant references to the "coal car" (tender) but there were a lot more oil burning engines than people realize.  Their biggest use was west of the Mississippi river in the southwest where there was much more oil available locally rather than coal which had to be shipped in.  They also were instances where oil burning locomotives were used to mitigate fire hazards in heavily forested areas, the Great Northern and the New York Central Adirondack branch come to mind but I'm sure there were more.  An example in the present time is the Durango and Silverton's conversion to oil after fire problems along their right of way.  The thing that's missing is, to steam fans, is the wonderful coal smoke aroma around coal-fired steam operations.  Oil burning steam locomotives produced a lot less smoke also......... until the time came to clean the the soot from the by "sanding" them, which would produce a massive nasty oily cloud of biblical proportions. So, flue sanding had to be done in isolated areas.

Or you can just wiggle the plug with the engine on the track and see if it jumps.  I suspect you don't have a voltmeter.

I'm slipping.  I never saw the rear driver all catawampus with the rest of them.  Good catch Jeffrey.

Unfortunately I want them too.  Back when H Lee Riley was directing Spectrum, the modern and Baldwin 4-4-0 included a bag of alternate parts, including multiple choices for pilots, sometimes the Cab, sometimes the domes, and a separate oil bunker and wood load for the tender.  I had five of those oil bunkers and have used two; I have three in reserve but they're all intended for my other engines.

These pilots and tender fuel loads should always be stocked, in my opinion.

Of course. I didn't get into all of that because it sounded like the OP just had two transformers with two wires to each loop and that was it.  And that's OK. It's entry level modeling and just as fun as anything else. I did the two loop-two power source thing way back in the Jurassic and never had more fun, especially when the trains were running in opposite directions and passing each other, the vertigo was incredible.

If the entire crossover itself was isolated from both transformers and was switchable so that either transformer could be chosen to power it, the train could go through easily. And then unfortunately be met head on with track powered from the other source.  Unless there was another switchable block to run into.  You have to have the whole layout broken up into switchable blocks for meaningful control.

The downside is that you have to be throwing switches like a madman to keep Jupiter aligned with Mars, that's what block control used to be like, and that's why it's rarely used on advanced model railroads anymore.

I wish I could remember where I heard this:   With block control you run the track, with DCC you run the train.

I don't understand why you want to install a crossover between two completely independent loops with two power supplies.  You will never be able to run a train smoothly through it from one loop to the other.

But. If you really want a crossover there,  don't buy the premade non-gapped one, instead buy two left-hand switches or two right hand switches and make your own crossover, gapping both rails between them.  Just be aware that you'll never be able to run a locomotive through it.  As long as you keep the power format you are using.

This sounds like a good candidate to put a can motor in.  You may have to pay a tech to do it.

You are not alone out on the sea.  There are a lot of experienced modelers on this forum besides me who can help, all with long years plugging away at this hobby.

Is there any possibility that you know someone else with a DCC layout? If so, you should try that engine out on it to see if the problem is in the engine. 

DCC operations rely on settings in the DCC decoder in the engine, called control values, or CV's.  If some of the functions work and some of them don't, it sounds like the control values in the decoder are scrambled.  Especially if this happens to be a used engine that someone incompetently altered the CVs in.   The problem is very unlikely the EZ command.  More advanced DCC cabs would have a connection for a programming track where you could easily reset everything to factory default. And maybe if you know someone that has such a system they can do it for you. Or even a hobby shop if there's one around.  But the EZ command, being an extremely simplified system for basic  Train set operation, does not have this capability.  It's probably designed like that to keep overly curious and unexperienced operators from scrambling it all up, which can be very easy to do.

In today's world, most of us don't have easy access to a local DCC model railroader.  So you may need to send the engine back to the Bachmann service department, after calling them.  I've dealt with them multiple times over at least 20 years about DCC stuff and always had a positive experience.  Don't think for a second that you need to bail out of model railroading. There's a way out, you just need to eliminate each possibility at a time to find out what's wrong. And then get it fixed.  I can assure you that nothing major is wrong that can't be fixed easily, it just needs to be isolated and identified.

I would like to, in closing, discuss all those videos that are out there. There are a lot of windbags and a lot of people not very competent that think they are experts that are putting videos up.  Sometimes I have to look for a video for something, because even after 20 years of running DCC, and nearly 40 years of Model Railroading before that, I still find things I need to learn something about.  Even with all that experience, most of the time I have to watch about a half dozen or more of those videos before I find one that really is worth much of anything. So don't let them frustrate you.

No new power source needed.  You have either a gap somewhere in the power or a short circuit has developed someplace.

You are using Bachmann equipment, right?

They offer several different types of cars for different eras of Railroad history.  If you tell us exactly which cars you have, we can figure something out for you.

It's OK for posts and threads to stay here, they can prove educational to others in the future