4-6-0 Headlight, Backup Light???

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

From what I can determine from looking at the blurb Loco Bill provided, my 4-6-0 is a version 5.

The engine has both working headlight/backup light LEDs (still v5 or is this an upgrade?).

What I'm seeing is that when the engine moves forward, the backup light is still faintly lit, when the engine is in reverse, the headlight is faintly lit.  It's just enough to let you know they're on and never get any brighter as speed is increased.

Is this normal, has the engine been modified to include working lights, or do the resistors in the circuit need to be increased?  Or, do I have the plugs on the rear of the engine (or the switches on the smoke box) reversed?

It doesn't seem to be a problem, the engine is running fine.

Bob D.

[Joe Satnik]

Bob,

Could be inductive kickback coming off the electric motor's commutators.

If you had an oscilloscope across the motor leads you could possibly see the kickback on the waveform. 

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Joe Satnik

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Thanks Joe!

No O'scope available  .  Like I said, the engine runs fine so I'm not too concerned yet.

The LEDs give off a yellow glow, not bright white.  Was this normal for a ver.5 engine?

Haven't taken the heat shrink off from around the resistors to see what values they are, I did add a mini-connector to the rear light so I could remove the tender shell easily.

Bob D.

[Joe Satnik]

Bob,

Inductive kickback laughs at resistors. 

The ca. 2000 version 5 chassis that I am most familiar with had an incandescent grain-of-wheat bulb in the front and nothing in the rear tender housing. 

Loco Bill will know more about when LEDs came on board.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Joe Satnik

[Joe Zullo]

My version 5 4-6-0 has GOW bulb up front and nothing in the rear housing. I think yours is a modification. I have since replaced the GOW bulb with an LED/resistor/bridge rectifier.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Thanks guys, I was doubtful this engine was "original".

Loco Bill had given me some tips before I bought it, but I still took a chance.  It turned out OK, fortunately I was able to fix the couple of things I found (burnt wiring on the lead truck and broken pilot mounts and no front coupler).  It had obviously been dropped or took a dive during a derail.

The amber/yellow LEDs look alright, they're not as bright as a white LED would be.  I suspect the resistor value used by whoever installed the mod is too small.

Still not a huge problem/issue so I'll leave it alone until I need to do some maintenance on it.

Bob D.

[Loco Bill Canelos]

It may well be original!   Remember all Standard line Big Hauler 4-6-0's with the version 5 chassis did not have operating backup lights they were dummy housings, and woodburneres did not even have dummy backup  lights. On the other hand the Version 5 chassis Anniversary 4-6-0's do have operating backup lights except for the woodburners.   

I cant remember when the shift to Led's came in, maybe Wade will have that info. I am still without all my reference materials unpacked.  Most if not all LED's in the Steam line were the yellowish color indicative of the time the real prototypes were built.  The resistors are fine as designed, but if you want the brighter whiter LED's you can replace the yellowish ones with a 5MM white one without changing the resistors.  Be careful though some of the so called white LED's seem to have too much of a blue tint to them to suit me!!!

Bill

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Bill,

Welcome back and thanks for the response!

I'm going to leave it as is for now, why mess with something that's working???

I also made the mod to the pilot truck that used a bent piece of brass instead of the truck being bolted straight thru to the chassis and moving within the slot.  Seems to be working fine.

After 10+ years of running O scale trains I believe I've had an epiphany (urban dictionary); this G scale Ten-Wheeler has been a blast to run, on a simple 8 foot diameter circle.  It's shown me that I didn't need an elaborate layout to be happy