DCC for new Athearn Genesis SD70MAC

[Anonymous]

Yesterday purchased new Athearn BNSF SD70MAC & NCE D13SRJ. Athearn documentation sparse-one page-70MAC history & exploded parts diagram. Installed decoder & it runs fine. Question: Ditch Lights. Do you just program the CVs for ditch lights OR Do you unhook the ditch lights, add resistors, solder to pads on the decoder & then program. Joe

[Pennsy58]

Good luck with the ditch lights. I have an SD-70 and did as instructed with these lights. Added 680 Ohm resistors and they still blew out after only 10 minutes. I gave up and replaced the ditch lights with miniatronics 1.5V lamps with the same resistors. Work fine now. You do need to add a resistor to each bulb. The can wire into the decoder with the lamps unless you wi***o use the ditch lights independently. Then follow the instructions for the decoeer for specific ditch light sequences.