Lost MFX Locos
Sometimes when placing
an MFX loco on the track, the familiar registration process just doesn't happen.
On other occasions a loco which was running happily last time you had a
"session" no longer appears on the loco list. The net result is the
same: The Preiserlings never get to go for a ride on their train, and they
finish up the day all grumpy, demanding ticket refunds, meal allowances and
goodness knows what all else.
One of the causes of
the problem seems to be an “interrupted” initial registration: If a loco is
placed on the track to register it and the process is interrupted in its early
stage by (for example) a short circuit elsewhere on the track, or the loco being
jiggled while it is being placed on the track so that the initial contact is
"bounced" a few times, that seems to bring the problem on. For this
reason, I like to stop other activity on the layout to eliminate
electrical noise when registering a loco (although this may not always be
possible if it’s an exhibition layout for example) and if one can press stop
(although the same constraints may apply) while actually placing the loco, that
makes a clean start too.
It's possible that an incomplete loco “delete” is also a cause of the problem,
and certainly the symptoms are the same even if the actual state may not be
identical. This may explain why sometimes the "recover lost MFX Loco"
function on the Central Station seems to work as it should, and in other cases
it just doesn't seem to help.
The CS2 and CS3 both have this "recover lost MFX loco" function built in.
Use of the function is covered in The Digital Club newsletter vol 31, #1 for Jan
2019 so won't be repeated here except to say it's certainly worth a shot, but in
my experience, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
What always seems to work for me is to take the offending locomotive and place
it on a track with a different controller. Let it register there, then move it
back to the original controller. The decoder and/or controller seem to
recognise that the original pairing is no longer valid and it then re-registers
normally.
Note that the “different controller" can even be almost anything: a 6021; an
intellibox; another CS; or even an analogue transformer - if the latter then just
run the loco in analogue mode for a few seconds (best to avoid
hitting the reversing pulse button though) then place it back on the
digital track.
It's possible there are exceptions where the foregoing might not work, but thus
far I don't recall ever failing to get a loco to re-register by this method. Try it.