Ok i bought my dash 9 very pleased with the deal i got, And i found out the ditch lights to not operate now how can i go about adding ditch lights too this loco. Has anyone done it before, or knows of the site where i can find this out. I never added ditchlights to any loco’s in my life and not sure where to start. And not sure where i go about gettin the parts, I plan on conneting the ditch lights too a digitrax decoder if this makes a difference. If someone can help me i qould apreciate it.
I have removed the stock Athearn ditch lights and replaced them with the correct Details West ones on a couple of those units. They look MUCH better, but are still non-operating. If you want them to work, you should be able to drill a hole in the bottom of the light housing to feed your wires in, and mount your bulb in the light, but I have never tried it. The Details West part number is DL-243. Hope that helps.
Ok that helps on what ill need to get, Now will i need any resitors for adding the led’s too the digitrax decoder. If so what kind.
PS. how much do the ditch lights run?
I was wondering the same thing. except, how would conert it to where all the lights were LEDs?
I’m not sure if you will be able to get LEDs in the ditch light housing. It’s pretty small, and I don’t think there are any LEDs made that are small enough. You may have to use a regular light bulb (I think they are called “grain of rice” or “grain of wheat” bulbs.)
As far as the price of the ditch lights themselves, there not much. Walthers has them for $3.50, but if you have a good LHS you will want to check there first. It may save you from having to pay shipping from Walthers.
use one led set farther back and run fiber optics
I heard LEDs dont look right as ditch lights something with how the light up and fade. I used grain of rice bulbs on my Spectrum Dash 8 I had to drill a hole and run them throw the front I installed 680ohm Resistors inline with my Digitrax decoder but I only installed the resistor on the negative side (blue wire).
so i will most likly need install a resitor?>
I would recomend either drilling out the supplied ones or get the correct castings and drilling them out. You can use 1.5volt bulbs with a resistor, I would start with a 1K and work my way down. But I would recomend 3.0volt circutron bulbs because they are able to immitate the flash of real bulbs and are fairley bright, You should use between a 270ohm and 390ohm resistor. Either way from there you should hook it up to one or two of you’r extra functions depending on if you want them to flash or not. You will have tho check with you’r decoder manual for programing and other directions.