I have been asked by a friend to upgrade 2 Atlas Dash 8-40 locomotives from DC to DCC with sound. I went out and got the correct Tsunami Decoders and speakers and set off to start the first installation. Everything wired up nicely, ran it across the programming track and used my Decoder Pro to program it up. Again, everything sounds great but how do I get the ditch lights to operate like the real thing? The real CSX Dash 8-40 engines have ditch lights that will alternate flashing left and right when the horn is activated. I know that the Atlas engine can do it as well, but I can’t figure out how to make it do it.
I wired each ditch light up to its own output. Left ditch light to F5, right ditch light to F6. When I start up the locomotive, I press F0 to turn on the head light, F5 and F6 to turn on the ditch lights. when I activate the horn F2, the ditch light just stay on and don’t flash alternating one and off.
Using Decoder Pro, How do I get the ditch lights to alternate back and forth light the real thing?
Tsunami Diesel Sound User’s Guide
Page 33
Example 3, Alternating Ditch Lights with Crossing Logic
In this example, we will configure the FX5 and FX6 outputs for use with bulbs
as Type I Ditch lights that flash when the horn is blown.
We first look up the initial CV value in Table G for a Type I Ditch Light
under the column labeled ‘Crossing Logic On’ and find it is 42 for Phase
A and 58 for Phase B. To get the lights to flash back and forth, FX5 is set
to the Phase A value and FX6 is set to the Phase B value.
Since we are not using Rule 17, we skip to Step 3.
