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.
I have two of the Trainmasters from Atlas from around 10 years ago. I programed one to go into Mars Light function when I sound the horn, very cool, the other engines Headlight has gone dim and failed. I am not able to “work on” or “repair” engines due to my lack of skills…would love to know if there is somewhere I could simply send the engine out to get the headlight fixed?
Best bet might be the LHS (local hobby shop), many of them do repair work. Sometimes at train show / RR flea markets there will be vendors there who do repair work (although most of them seem to do Lionel and AF rather than HO).
If you can open up the engine (remove a couple of screws) and look, it might just be a wire has come loose that you could repair yourself or maybe have a friend with a soldering iron take care of for you.
Funny you should have this issue. I had a similar problem with 2 identical Atlas Gold n scale locos bought new from Lombard in March, both with LoksoundV5 nano decoders. Everything worked fine EXCEPT front headlights. Would not work no matter what. Did the suggested CV8=8 reset - no change. Since under warranty, I sent them back to Atlas. They said, of course, they worked fine. Sent them back to me, and now they work. So they did something, but refuse to disclose. These were Dash8-40C 40005673 and 40005675 btw. Don’t know if there is a QC issue or a Atlas OEM sound file setting issue.
