I recently bought a DC HO Athearn F59PHI. While it runs incredibly smoothly (crawls at low speed, flies at top speed, pleasant whirring sound throughout), I find the lighting behaviour odd. The front lights don’t come on at all until I’m at least 50% on my power pack, at which point they are merely dim (and the loco is already hustling around the track). They don’t become “bright” until I’m about 75% on my power pack, at which point the loco is just flying - too fast for my taste, in fact, as I fear derailments in the corners. Reversing is different, however - the reversing light comes on - bright - at only about 25%. One could conclude that the front requires higher voltage because there are many more lights, but is that really the case (or are they using fiber optic cable)? In this era of modern circuitry and constant lighting (my P2K locos come to mind), I am surprised at this behaviour. Is anybody else experiencing this? Or should I be getting my loco ready for a trip back to Athearn?
If you want lights on all the time, then you either have to go with fancy DC power, DCC power or battery power.
If you want better light control, then consider DCC.
David B
I think that’s just the way to go. I converted my two to DCC and I had to change the start voltage to max just to get them to move at a lower speed setting. They suck a lot of power and are not my favorite loco’s. I basically just use them at train shows when I want to run my GO Train.
Are you running DC or DCC? If it’s an older Athearn locomotive, it probably has the light bulb mounted to the bracket that lights up the whole cab, too. I’m still using DC, and I’ve installed the constant lighting kit from Miniatronics. It comes with the circuit, bulbs wired in, and two extra bulbs (front and rear directional kit). The lights come on at a much lower setting (loco sitting still).
If it has a constant lighting unit (6 diodes (black with silver stripe), then you should only need to crack the throttle slightly and they should come on at near full brightness (as the rear light seems to do), if not something is faulty. If it doesn’t have a CLU then they will vary with the speed setting of the throttle. Circuitron and Miniatronics both offer CLUs.
I agree with this. I still run DC as well and replaced all the single bulbs in my F59PHI’s with individual bulbs. Bleow are two really up close pictures that I have from another thread I made on super detailing an Athearn F59PHI.
Forward and reverse configuration shown.
My RTR AMD-103 is the same way. The lights don’t get bright enough until it’s moving pretty fast.
The usual constant lighting circuit uses the motor’s current to bring the lights to full brightness before the motor has enough power to move. This takes about 2 volts off of the motor’s top speed, so it only gets about 10V with the throttle turned up to 12V. Athearn used to use this type of circuit.
To get around the voltage drop from the motor, Athearn came up with a lighting circuit that uses a resistor instead of the motor as a current source. This allows the full 12V to reach the motor, but the lights remain dim until the resistor has enough electrical current going through it to bring the bulbs to full power. So, the operation of your lights is unfortunately “normal”.
I thought I had a better overview of AMTK 463 with the ditch lights on but sadly I do not. Here is a picture of an old undetailed Metrolink F59PHI with the new bulbs. Also, I included a P42 to show that this can be done with other locomotives as well.
Thanks everyone.
I brought it to my LHS on Saturday for them to take a look at it, too. Darth Santa Fe’s answer makes perfect sense to me, now, because when we took the shell off, we were both surprised that it did appear to have a constant lighting board, and thus both doubly puzzled by the poor lighting behaviour. Now all is revealed. It’s still odd that Athearn would chose to do (and mass produce) this, however - was that really the best solution they could come up with? I get better lighting performance out of my 1977 Tyco!
Miniatronics, here I come…