I have an installation showing a TCS decoder using a LL harness. I see no reference to this harness in the various catalogs. Is there a substitute for the LL harness?
TCS has stopped doing loco specific harnesses a few years back. Most harnesses now come either short medium and long with regular lay plugs or reversed plugs. Most of the LL plug in boards will take a direct plug LL decoder. If you tell us what loco you have we can probably tell you what we have done to fit decoders and lighting in it.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
It is a Pre Walthers Proto 2000 FA-1.
Ah yes I could have guessed it. The early PAs and E units were the same way. I have done a few (7) for myself and club members. I scrapped the LL boards and lights and did a 9 pin JST harness with an LED (3mm sunny white) for the headlights. It is an easy hard wire job that will run and light better then the LL stuff will give you. One of my club mates was adamant about using a bulb instead of an LED in his loco until he got the melting plastic smell. Then it was a can you please put an LED in it for me? Using a 1K 1/4 watt resistor for each LED is good for most DCC track voltages.
Pete has the best answer, this is the way I do almost every loco I put a decoder in. But if you are adament about not soldering anything, the DP2X decoder can plug right in with no harness. The specific feature of the old LL harness was a jumper wire so it could be used in the E units witht he Mars light. The P2K circuit board actually has a connection to pin 3, which is traditionally not connected to anything - so you cna plug the thing in backwards and not hurt anything. LL uses this pin, which would be the green wire from teh decoder, for the Mars light function. So the TCS LL harness installed a jumper between the yellow (unused rear light) and the green pin 3, so that F0R could turn the Mars light on and off. This is the only real difference with the LL harness vs any other equal length harness. If your loco has no Mars light, it doesn't make a bit of difference if that jumper is there or not. And even if it does - the decoder's Mars light effect is better than the silyl LL dual filament light anyway - replace with a normal bulb or LED. TCS and NCE decoders can do decent effects even with LEDs so there's no reason to use LEDs for everythign else and an incandescent bulb for the Mars light.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.