Hi Experts,

I have purchased a few second hand Marklin locos and I am in the process of cleaning them and getting them ready for the season. My 55801 is producing a rather strange effects that I cannot explain, nor have any idea how to trace and fix:
1) The headlights flicker and if I run the loco with the headlights on, the motor slows down and revs up again
2) Even with the engine sounds turned off the loco plays engine startup and shutdown sounds continuously. If I turn on the engine sounds, everything is fine, there is idle sounds and the engine revs up as I open the throttle.

The loco looks very new, no wear. It is hardly noticeable, but there are some mould patches on the outside of the engine. Also the pages of the user manual are stuck together. So it has certainly stored in damp area somewhere.

I know it is hard to tell understand the issue with the description above, but please have a look at the footage I have taken. I tried to demonstrate all the issues mentioned above.


Any advice is welcome.

Regards,
Csongor

Thanks for this tip. I never thought that this can be a problem. I have taken the loco out to the garden on Saturday where I am running with an MS2. And everything was fine. Today, it was producing the same glitches. So I set my MS2 to only mfx and MM2 and now everything is back to normal.
This is very strange, but at least I know what to do with it.

All my locos are older Marklin with Motorola decoders and sound. I do enjoy sound, but after a while I notice it less and less. Therefore I am less inclined to upgrade it to a modern sound decoder. Having said that I yet to experience a modern mfx decoder. Maybe if I played with an mfx decoder, I would never go back.
I have an Aristo-Craft Class 66 with an ESU XL (XL 3 probably) decoder. It is nice, but I am not blown away by it.