With the passing of January 19 I am another year older and another loco richer. (thanks to the weefe) Now here is the question…
I have an atlas silver dash 8 and the lights on this one are a golden like color. The new dash 8 which also is an atlas silver its lights have a different bluish tint to them. Why? is this something that I can change so that the locos have the same color? Or is this something that happens in the real world, different locos have different color lights?
Now part 2… my track is clean but I am experiencing a flicker on the opposite end of the direction that im running. If i go backwards the front lights flicker and if i go fowards the rear lights flicker. Whats up with that?
OK. The light issue. All Atlas locomotives come with LEDs. You can change the color with different LEDs. Atlas uses the Yellow glow LED. If you want to try, go to your local LHS and ask for some golden yellow LEDs. They give out the right yellow color and hue that the real locomotives give off. If do get them, you need to get resistors for them too.
Now your flickering problem. Does this hppen with every locomotive you have or only the one your talking about?
The flickering was happining with every loco that Im running. The track is 4 pieces of atlas flex code 100 on cork with one set of feeders soldered to it.
What your going to want to do is solder another set of feeders (If not two) to this section of the track. What’s happening is that your locomotives are not getting all the electrical pickup they need. With more electricity the less problems you will have with the flickering. What happens is, when your locomotive hits a dirty spot or joint at the rail connectors, and loses power for a fraction of a second, the chip thinks its restarting/ reseting itself, so it checks for lights and thats when you see the flicker. So add some more feeders and see what happens.
I had some of the same problems, but put in some more feeders and it happened less often.
I run Atlas Dash-8’s (DCC) and if I am going forward, my rear lights aren’t even on. If I am going backward, the front isn’t on. I am guessing you aren’t running in DCC? I did have some flickers which were eliminated with extra feeders, but they only occurred around turnouts. If that isn’t it, maybe an internal wiring issue?