Hey all! Just bought a trio of Atlas Train Masters, CNJ, new from two different dealers. Two with ESU sound, one silent w/ 21-pin.
On the long hood end, these locos have separate LEDs for the number board lights and headlights. On one sound unit, F0 turns on both head and class lights (though it looks like only one of the two headlight “bulbs” is illuminated). On one sound and the silent unit (LokPilot), F0 gets me number boards but no headlight. I only see two wires going from the long-hood LED board to the motherboard.
(On the short hood end they have a single LED and a prism, and that works just fine on all three.)
My guess is a bad light board… but having that happen on two units from two different dealers seems odd. I emailed Atlas and got a kind of non-answer about some units have a different function for mars lights (I gave them my stock #s, no mars on CNJ). Anyone have any experience here? Is there a function I’m missing? Is the LED light a known-bad part? Any ideas/help/experience would be welcome!
Normally with ESU equipped engines, the numberboards are a different function button from the headlight - assuming the engine is built with separate LEDs for each. Did the sound engines come with a booklet with all the function button settings listed?
It has been a while but I do recall that I had to ‘rework’ the PCB boards in these Atlas TMs. Mine are Lackawanna so no Mars light as well. I forget exactly what I had to do but it involved cutting a trace on the board since three of the LEDs would light when the headlight was on and I wanted the number boards to stay illuminated using another function (F5 I believe I used)
I’ll have to do some head scratching to figure out exactly what I did and I may have notes scribbled somewhere. I believe this is the rear board:
As you can see there are only the two wires going to the boards so no separate function for the number boards. I seem to recall that no matter where I grounded anywhere on the PCB all of the LEDs would light so I had to cut one of the traces and solder an additional wire to the board. I should have more photos so I’ll have to dig through my files (tomorrow) and see what I can find.
