I am having some strange behavior from my newest loco, a 39520, which I have only had for a month or so.

Over the last week it has been parked in my yard, which does not have a power bus in all sections. It was in an area where I have seen other locos stop on occasion, maybe due to a dead spot in the track. But when the problem happens it is obviously getting power and what it is doing is totally new to me.

While sitting idle in the yard it has on several occasions initiated a long sound recording, which does not match any of the loco sounds that I can access through functions. It is basically a man speaking - German I assume although I unfortunately am not good with languages. It is quite long - at least one minute, maybe up to two minutes and it is a monologue, sounding pretty much like a man giving a lecture. It starts when I turn off layout power and then turn it back on again, even though I am not addressing the 39520 in any way. I can only stop it by turning power back off or waiting until the lecture finally ends. I can not easily replicate this, as it seems to happen at random, but if I find a way to do that I will record it. Maybe it is telling me that I need to replace the Märklin decoder with a new ESU one.

Now it is back on a mainline and I will see if it happens where the power supply is strong and clean. If it continues I guess it might be time for a new decoder, although I have not yet done a reset on the current decoder to see if that helps. I am surprised that there is enough memory to hold such a long sound file, which probably totals the length of all of the normal sounds combined.

Is it some kind of strange easter egg or is it just broken?

Insights or opinions would be appreciated!

Thanks for the ideas Costin, and I can answer some of your questions right now.

It is not a normal decoder sound mapped to any of the functions in either set, above or below F15. In other words I can not initiate this sound by activating any of the available functions on this decoder. It only happens on its own and right after layout power has been resumed. All of the other sound files are there and they are complete, which makes me wonder how there is enough sound memory to hold all of them. But since the real sounds and this additional sound file are both on the decoder, it obviously is possible and your info about 3 minutes of sound is helpful.

I am essentially trying what you suggest by moving the loco to a mainline with a good solid power supply via a bus. I never observed this behavior when it was on a mainline and it has only been in the yard for the last week or so. I just moved it last night when I was shutting down so now I will see if this keeps happening with better and more consistent power out on a mainline. I would be happy if my yard is causing this and it does not happen elsewhere since it might mean that the loco decoder is OK. Also that would certainly get me moving to extend my power bus to all of the yard!

The consist idea is a great one! Unfortunately I have not associated this loco with a consist, so that is not the answer. I am curious if anyone has ever seen this behavior before or if I have found a unique bug in my pretty new loco.

Thanks Mike, and that does fit with what I was hearing. I had not seen that in the function descriptions for this loco, but you are correct that it is in the manual.

None of the functions show as active when this happens, but perhaps F23 had been activated in the past. I don't know of a way to display the last functions on a CS2 but if you can do that on a MS2 I would expect that there is a way.

I will continue to see what it does and at least I now understand why my loco was giving me a nice lecture. Too bad that I don't understand spoken German very well.

I think I've found a video explaining what is being said:



Per.

P.S: I you need a translation, Gulu Gulu can help you find it