CN GP38-2W

[Schraddel]

Hello,


The new LEDs for the lights. The tower type 2mm warm-white LEDs are for the headlights and will get 1.2Kohm resistors. The abbove shown type 0603 LEDs are sunny-white and pre wired. They will get 1.0Kohm resistors.





But before installing the LEDs get some black dye and brush a thick layer onto the inside of the shell. Otherwise you will have the illuminating effects of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.





When the paint has dried, i begun mounting of the LEDs. First the ditchlights, but the wires here are somewhat tricky to manage them around some sharp corners and through small bores.
One of the tower LEDs has bee places also.





At the rear end of the loco there were no ditch lights. But because i wanted them here too, i purchased a pair of EMD standard ditch lights from Details West. Also the LEDs and resistors were ready placed.





Because the Details West ditch lights were not intended for lightning, the casings were drilled out by the means of a 1.5mm drill bit.





Then suitable bores were drilled into the rear deck and the ditch light casings glued onto. For the ease of handling the light casings during mounting them, the sprues were removed when the glue had hardened.





Wires, wires, wires. For deconfusing me the colours were in accordance to the NMRA guides wherever it was possible.





Each LED has it's own resistor. The colour codes tells you where the wires run to. Only the ditch lights have black wires, because they were delivered with them.





So it is not really an big secret.
BLUE = decoder "+" 12V, one wire of each LED, the "+" one of course, lead the the "+". The decoder has 3 "+" outputs, so simply choose one. The BLACK "+" wires of the ditch light LEDs terminate here also
WHITE = front light, here the resistor is interconnected
YELLOW = back light, resistor too
BLACK "-" of the front ditch light LEDs terminate both at an resistor which is soldered to F3 output
BLACK "-" of the rear ditch light LEDs terminate both at an resistor which is soldered to F5 output

That is the whole magic of wiring your loco.
As the front ditchlights on CN locos are only both ON when the loco is moving, they can be terminated both to one decoder function output. The same is just with the rear ones.

The next magic is function mapping and configurating the decode function outputs.  For this RTFM! of your decoder.


Lutz