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I'd guess that the metal strip across the top of the motor isn't making good contact with the inverted metal "L" coming up from the trucks. If you can, I'd advise replacing the strip with fine wire soldered in its place. This gives better pickup as it can't move and lose the contact. In the short term, you should be able to bend the ends of the metal strip up so that it presses firmly on the underside of the inverted "L" on each truck. <br /> <br />Fitting DCC to Athearn should be easy enough - you need to remove the strip, then unclip the motor from the frame. Underneath is a small brass clip that passes power through the frame to the motor - remove this and the motor should be isolated, though it's a good idea to double-check with a cheap mulitmeter to avoid letting the smoke out of your decoder! The only possible problem is that some Athearn locos do draw quite a lot of amps, though when I checked a few of mine recently I got very little over 1 amp stall current. Hope this helps! <br /> <br />(Edited to add something I forgot the first time - bit about multimeters!)
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