I recently bought a DC Proto 2000 SD7 at the Springfield train show for a great price - it was described as DCC ready on the box. This was fine since I had a few extra LokPilot 2.0 decoders lying around. I took off the shell and removed the DC plug from the 8 pin socket and plugged in my LokPilot. The motor runs great and the lights also seem to be ok. However, the resistors on the locomotive's PC board (that are in series with the bulbs) seem to be getting very hot - enough to burn my finger if I were to touch it.
As far as I can make out, the bulbs are low-voltage types and the resistors - which are pretty hefty (seem to be 1W types) serve the purpose of limiting voltage fed to the bulbs.
Are these resistors supposed to get this hot? These resistors are close to the shell - I am concerned that the shell might actually melt due to the heat. Should I replace the bulbs with 12V rated bulbs?
Slowly building a layout since 2007!
It's probably OK, they ARE large resistors, at least 1 watt, but that can be a lot of heat inside a plastic shell. When I put DCC in one of those I removed the stock board and put in some LEDs with a 1K resistor. No heat.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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