Very handy motor decoder designed to drop in replace the factory lightboard.
And it does for most Proto 2000 locomotives with the DCC ready adapter board to which the locomotive wiring is already correctly attached. Two screws out and back in and you’re done (after getting the shell off and back on which varies a bit but gebersllyb requires removal of the two secret screws hidden under the trucks but accessible without removing the trucks, some also need the couplers removed first because the pilots have closed bottom edges).
However, the GP 38-2 models are not drop in. Lifelike powered the numberbo lights from pins 4 and 5 along with connections to the motor. Leaving those connected results in poor running, some say a blown Decoder but I don’t see how that could happen.
The temporary fix is to just remove the two black wires from one pin and the two white wires from the other pin. I also removed the bulbs and those wires from the locomotive, for now. Plastic wiring clips make this simple to do. You are left with just the one wire on each of those tabs but no numberboard lighting.
The bulbs are Lifelike standard 1.5v so you cannot just wire them to one of the available function tabs which deliver 12v unless you include a resistor in one wire to each bulb or fit 12v bulbs instead. Alternatively, you could move the wires to the track pickup tabs but then the numberboard lights would not be switchable. I don’t know of another solution.
TCS in their installation page instructions suggest the LL8 is a drop in for this GP38-2 but it isn’t.
Similarly but for different reasons TCS suggests the LL8 drops into their S2 but it won’t. The board is about 1 mm too wide to fit right up inside the shell. Without trimming the LL 8 board won’t even fit past the side walkway moulding. By filing and scraping with an exacto I trimmed equal amounts off each long edge of the board and got it to fit.
TCS instructions state the adapter board should b