Well I was able to test the lights using another coach, they work. So I am assuming I did something to the coupler off the engine or the decoder itself. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I tested it with another coach that had current conducting couplers and a pick up shoe the lights worked. I think I did make contact with the third rail if you will and ruined the light function. It just came today and I spent a a pretty penny for the set. So I will return the locomotive set and see of they can fix it. Otherwise it a gorgeous set and was running marvelously.

Thanks for the advice.

Where ever you send it I would make sure to get some quote of how much it will cost you including postage before sending it off

Hi!
Probably not.
The question is: will they be able to tell user fault (no warranty) from material fault (warranty)? Probably not (but that depends on how many people kill their decoders this way).

I wish they did! Just on the off chance there might have been one inside I opened it up. No luck. I think it is a great idea, I was hoping just de powering it or resetting the cs and the engine would do the trick( it does on a 737 ;) ) I did call the store where I bought, they were very sympathetic, told me to ship it back. Hopefully it is covered and an easy fix. If not lesson learned.

Thanks again for the advice and kind words I do feel like such crap ( for lack of a better word) about it all!

Oh Boy, that is really scary. I also have this set, but have yet to put it on the carpebahn.
Matter of fact, I finally got out the Roller Test Stand this past week to test a couple of loks, but
more importantly to see if it would operate.

Well I learned that I could not use the 60653 directly with the test stand, but I digress, and
had to use my favorite 6021. Anyway all went well.

Back to the Super Chief. There is a Marklin/European train meet of July 27/28 (Eurowest 2014)
at the Hiller Air Museum. There are always Marklin reps there in addition to a few of guys that know
their way around Marklin and other European model trains.

Might be worth the gas and admission to have another set of eyes look at your set.

Good luck and think positive!!

Regards
gene
.

Coffee stirrers make great uncoupling sticks. There seems to be a vogue for wooden ones here at the moment, they're long, narrow, and light coloured so easy to see in the darkness between a couple of coaches. Plus they're non-conductive.

That's a poor decoder design IMO. There should be some sort of overload protection if a short will kill the decoder before it trips the controller out. It's not hard to implement (ESU do it) and the risk of accidentally touching the live rail to the coupler contact should have been foreseen.

Shorting to the chassis/the outer rails should be more drastic than shorting to the centre rail. Decoder output is minus, centre rail is minus most of the time, outer rails are plus most of the time.

With my ECoS 50200 the digital multi meter says there is less than 1VDC between the third rail and ground and 17VAC between third rail and ground.The decoder outputs are rectified and the polarity is negative for each output and positive for decoder output return (ESU blue wire). When you wire a function between decoder output (-) and (loko) ground (AC signal or alternating + and -), you get a half wave rectified signal-potential across the output only when ground is positive in the AC sine wave, or 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time when ground is at negative in the AC sine wave there is no potential across the output as it and ground are both negative at that moment. That is why the lamps flash when wired to ground and not output return.

As to fuses, they will neither react fast enough nor when needed. The specs for fuses typically allow a 200% variance in the fusing window. Much too high a value and much to slow to react and protect the decoder.

No sine wave with digital operation. Make this about 75 % with MM protocol. With DCC it depends on the implementation.