Something is terribly wrong with the gears in Bachmann's N scale locomotives.  After a few hours of running, the wheel gears split down the entire length of the shaft.  These gears feature a hollow press-fit feature for the wheel axles; this permits the wheels to be electrically isolated from each other.  When the shaft splits, two of the gear's teeth are split and cause jamming to the drive gear.  Further, the wheels' axles no longer fit correctly.

I could use some help here folks.  I have an old MDC 2-8-0 (the one with the open frame motor and brass tires) that I recently put a TCS decoder into.  It runs fairly well, but it's noisy.  Can anybody suggest some things that I can do to improve it, short of replacing the motor?  The noise is a high pitched motor whine and is quite annoying.  I'm sure it will never go away, but I'm hoping it might be possible to reduce it to a tolerable level.

Hi.

I am having trouble with Micro-Tsunami TSU 750 decoder that I installed in a DCC ready HO Bachmann 80 ton three truck shay locomotives.

I have yet to connect the speaker as I wanted to see if I had done it right first before modifying things to fit the speaker.

The loco moves forward and in reverse but very slowly and with much noise and the light don't come on.

So I put another locomotive on the track and it works fine. I took the tender apart again and rechecked my soldering work, it appears to be ok.

Anyone had experience fitting a sound decoder to a Bachman 2-8-0.Mine is the newer release but not a Spectrum.

If so what decoder would be best suited ?