I spoke to Don yesterday on the phone, and he told me to send it in. My other two S2's run great, and I think the sound is awesome for an N scale switcher.
My new Atlas S2 right out of the box was about the same. Called Atlas and talked to Don and sent it in. Five weeks later it was returned and is perfect now. One of the problems Don mentioned was there was some sort of substance on all of the wheels from the factory. He cleaned that off and reset the sound decoder, called me and he ran it for 20 minutes while we were on the phone. He ran it for another day just to be sure before shipping it back to me. Right out of the box now it is excellent. Atlas Tech Support, Ext.7133, Don. A real great help. Remember you have a warrenty. If you mess with it to much it is void. Doug
I was hoping it would be one that they stock, but now that you say it, I do remember seeing somewhere on the internet that this sound decoder was specially designed for this loco.
Now that I think about it, I do remember the sound being a bit erratic when I first put the engine on the layout (my other two that I received earlier ran just fine out of the box). I figured it was dirty track, so I placed a track cleaning car in front of it to see if that would help. I turned off the sound because the erractic behavior was getting annoying. I figured after a few laps, the track would be clean and I could turn the sound back on. I wonder if that erratic sound had anything to do with this. It looks like a call to Atlas is in my future...
It's an ESU LokSound sound decoder made specifically for Atlas.
I just picked up my S2 from my LHS over the weekend. I was running it on the layout to break it in and was doing some work on the work bench. I decided to check on the engine and noticed it wasn't moving. I thought it might have hit a dirty spot on the track, when I went over to give it a nudge, I noticed it was hung up on a turnout. The front truck assembly was melted, and I'm sure I saw a puff of smoke coming from the engine . So anyway, I know I will need to replace the truck, and I'm assuming I will need to replace the board. Any idea which one it is? I tried looking it up on Atlas' website, but the part number did not come up when I did a search. I can't imagine my stupidity would be covered under warranty.
Thanks,
Scott