Electronics and DCC

I've got a question that, I suspect, will be darn near impossible to diagnose here, but you guys have never ceased to amaze me so far, so here goes...

I bought an Atlas Master Series Gold SDP35 Low Nose w/DCC & QSI off of Ebay about 6 weeks ago. As some of you may be aware of my progress on my layout from past postings, I just now got track laid temporarily last week in order to run the train, so I've only got about 1-2 hrs on the thing. A couple of days ago, it started having trouble starting. I only have a dc Atlas xformer (for now) hooked up to 2 spots on the track, so I initially thought it wasn't getting enough power consistantly around the layout, but I multi-metered it multiple places around the layout and it was reading 13 volts consistantly. When i give it power, you hear the brakes being released, the light comes on, then it shuts right back off. If I go over to it and give it a little nudge, it'll start up and go OK. But, after I throttle up, it is only going about half the speed as it did the first couple of days I had it. When I try to give it more throttle, it stops and gives that short, multiple blast of the horn, indicating that I've throttled up too quickly.

Any idea what the heck I've done or what happened???

Signed,

Derailed in SC (a.k.a Skip)

Track clean?  Wheels clean?  Joiners tight?  Pop the shell and check the wiring for loose or just touching contacts.  (happened to me)  Take the engine to a friend's house with DCC and see if it runs the same or better. And speaking of this my Athearn Genesis Challenger does the same thing in DC mode for me.  Guess it's time to run it in DCC and see what happens.  I'll let you know on Monday.

Archie

Monday already.  The old challenger won't go in DCC mode.  The light won't even come on.  I thought this was supposed to be easy?  Just program the decoder, enter the engine number and away you go.  The entries above will be the right answer for you.

Archie

 It IS that easy. But if it won't run on DC, it's not going to run on DCC either. The basic principle is the same - there has to be a solid path for the electricity to travel from the DCC booster to the rails, through the rails, to the wheels of the loco, and from the wheels to the decoder. If this is compromise anywhere, through firty track or wheels, bad wheel pickups, faulty rail joiners - it won't run no matter how much you wish.

                             --Randy