I have a brand new Bachmann 55T 3-truck Shay. I’ve done a battery conversion and it is wonderful except for the part where the front truck sporadically stops working.
Investigating some, it appears that if I pull on the motor power wires just right then the front truck works ok.
I conclude from this that there is a bad/flaky solder joint to the PCB that connects down to the front truck.
A few questions and a plea for help:
-
does this seem like a reasonable diagnosis?
-
how the heck do I get access to that PCB?
I can’t figure out how to get the boiler off. So far I’ve gotten the front of the boiler off and temporarily removed the smoke generator, and I can see the wires that I need to work with going into the PCB, but sure can’t get to them to try to fix them.
I’m handy with a soldering iron and am pretty confident that I know how to fix it if I can get access.
Any suggestions? I’ve googled around and seen various pages with Shay tips, but haven’t yet found how to dismantle things enough.
Thanks in advance!