I was looking at a couple of my B units and they appear to have light housings on the rear up by the radiator housing. Couple of my Athearn GP’s have lights bach there too. Are these ditch lights? If not, what are they and what color should they be?
No, those are the ‘knock outs’ for class lamps - Something not used very much anymore. Ditch lights would be down at frame level or mounted on the walkway.
Jim
So the front ones on the nose on either side of the head light would be class lights too?
Bingo!
George
Yep, class lights on front and rear. Here is a photo that shows lit class lights up front:
I’m not familiar with B unit class lights, but I have seen “back up” lights on these.
Yes, these would be back-up lights. “A” units also have back-up lights.
Sorry for all the questions.
So, would front class lights stay on all the time or strobe?
Should you wire rear back up lights to come on and stay on when the rear head light is lit?
class lights show the following info:
Not lite - Scheduled Train
white - Extra
green - another section following(each ‘section’ would display green until the ‘last’ section passes and it will not have green class indicators).
Class lights do not flash(at least all the ones I have seen). Many can be set to a ‘red’ indication and used as a ‘marker’ light if needed.
Jim
Very good explanation of classification lights, Jim. All classification lights I’ve seen were steady burning. As for the B units, they were back-up headlights when the engineer was using the hostler position in the rear of the B unit to back up an A-B set, usually around the yard. Not all railroads had them and many that did only added them after the A-B-B-A sets were broken up. It was easy to make a reverse movement when you could hop out of one cab and then walk down the tracks to the cab of the following A unit.