Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

I'd taken the shells off of my two SD45's to do some weathering - a few photos of them since have appeared on Big Blue. I'd been running them together for the past week or so without a problem when.... my Erie Lackawanna unit decided it didn't want to turn its motor. The Reading unit attached to it was grunting pretty good to even move trains at all.

Pulled the Erie unit off the rails and doublechecked my CV's for consist. Everything looked good. Took the unit out of consist and tried running it as a single. Light worked, directional lighting worked, no motor op. Based on the troubleshooting I knew I had power to the encoder, and except for motor function, all was good.

Time to take the shell off again. Checked the DCC plug, made sure the encoder was still secured and was not touching any other components. Everything hunky dory. This particular encoder has a short connecting wire harness from the plug to the encoder and there are several spare wires that go nowhere.... (anyone seeing where this is going?)

Found the problem as I traced all of the extra lengths of spare wires. The spare purple wire for accessory functions got trapped between the shell and the cast frame. I guess it wore enough after a week of running that a sneak circuit was created. Clipped off the portion with the bare wire and secured that little rascal before putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Just goes to show that even wires you're not using may become a problem....