Switchers stalling? Please no.

[faraway]

...several weeks ago i bought an Athearn Genesis MP15AC. ...

I did have the same current pickup problems as described by Lutz. The suggested solution did help a lot and the engines did run much better. However, the pickup was substandard again when I did run two SP MP15AC today. The engines did not come to a complete halt but the lights flicker and the run was some times not as smooth as it should be. The wheels looked clean and fresh as usual.
I did put the engines on a DCC powered divided brass brush and let the wheel clean them self running on that brush. To my surprise that solved the problem.
My guess is that Athearn did use a different material for at least some runs of the Genesis MP15AC wheels than they did on other engines. I assume that material tends to build a very thin layer of invisible oxide.

Remark, an older CSX YN1 (rn 1138) engine from 2008 shows none of the problems and runs like hell without any fixes or cleaning.

Let me pop up this old thread again.
I got the two MP15AC again out of the cabinet and they had the pickup problems again. Cleaning the wheels did improve the behavior but they did still tend to stall on some switches. All the spots they stall at are passed by all other engines! The lamps tend to flicker if you lift one truck. But all those problems are highly intermittent.
I came back to my suspicion and changed the wheels sets this time. Looks like that cured the problem. They are solid runners now. I assume Athearn had a batch of wheels that get a thin invisible layer of oxide after some time.