I recently purchased some new HO scale Roundhouse (Athearn) GP38-2 and GP60 engines, their latest run. All five came with an NCE decoder installed from the factory.

I took the first GP38-2 out of the box, programmed it to the road number, and then called up the engine using my NCE Power Cab on a separate program track. At step 1, the engine takes off! No, it does not creep like it should. Okay, maybe I have a bad decoder? So I move on to the next engine, another GP38-2 and the same thing happens! I do this 3 more times and all 5 engines take off.

Since I know it’s an NCE decoder, I called up Ed @ NCE and while he was not familiar with the decoder Athearn used, he did give me some CV settings to check. After doing two factory resets and programming CV2, 5 & 6 per Ed, the results are still the same.

I reached out to Athearn and they want me to send them back. The cost to ship all 5 back would be very expensive and I’, sure the dealer would tell me the same.

Before I go that route, I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced what I have going on. Also, I’m going to see if they hard wired the decoder into the unit or used a drop in decoder. If the latter, I’ll try to put in another NCE decoder to see if the results are for the better. I’ll take shell off this week and see. Hopefully, they didn’t use double stick tape on the inside of shells like the last batch of Roundhouse engines. That in itself was major surgery, as the frame had the only way to change the couplers was to remove the shell to get access to the couplers.

Looking forward to see if this is a fluke or big issue Athearn has with these engines..

Thanks!

Neal