More Hand controller problems

[Dean]

I've been having HC problems for a while now. But now the problems are getting weirder.
I was running a four-engine MU setup for a couple of hours with no problems. When finished I shut the power off to the layout and the both of my HCs. The next day, I powered up the layout and tried to run the same MU setup as the day before. Neither HC would recognize any of the engines in the MU setup. None of the engines were on the list of engines. I tried to use Find Product and neither HC could find any of the engines.
I cleared all the engines from one of the HCs and reloaded all the Railpro engines on my layout. But it could not find the four engines in the MU setup.
Is it possible that both HCs were trying to take control of the MU and locked out the decoders in the MU setup?
I'm baffled.

[G8B4Life]

Did you wait 10 seconds before powering the layout and HC's off from when you finished running the MU? I wonder if the problem is the same mechanism that was mentioned in this post in that the MU'd loco's are stuck in the actively controlled list?

I noted that you've removed all the products from one of the HC's but I'd try clearing the Active Loco List on the HC that was controlling the MU. There is a button under Tools for this now. I'd also clear the active loco list from the other HC for good measure as well. Failing that working you may need to reset the HC's but I'd defer to Tim Ring beforehand as I've not heard of this issue before.

- Tim

[Dean]

I'm an idiot. And I am embarrassed.
A while back I started upgrading my engines from DCC to RailPro. All my EMD F series engines are Stewart/Kato models from the 1990s. I have some powered chassis so I decided to upgrade the chassis, clean and lubricate them, and repair/paint anything that needed it. Then I would swap the bodies to the upgraded chassis and start the process again.
But I ran into some problems. I ended up with multiple engines with the same road number. It was fine when there were some running DCC and some running RailPro. Although all the engines in this group were the same railroad, some had different paint schemes. So I labeled them in RailPro as new or old. IE: Blacklog 1974 new, or Blacklog 1974 old. Everything was fine. But my feeble mind was getting confused.
The engines that my Hand Controller wouldn't recognize were DCC. Duh. I thought they were RailPro. I didn't realize this until I took the bodies off of them. I'm an idiot.
To make these engines idiot-proof will require renumbering the engines. The decals on these engines have been on there ~15 years. It's going to be a mess. Unfortunately, I have lost the original file that I printed the name and numbers from. Duplicating the style is going to be a pain.
And then there are the engines that are factory painted. Like the Pennsylvania RR. It didn't matter if there were duplicate engine numbers on these. They have been in a MU set up since day one and all the engines have the same address in DCC.
I have created a real mess.
And, I'm an idiot.

[CPRail]

Ping our Group Host Bill. He did some amazing decals for me from photos. He might be able to make you some new sets.