Years ago, I bought a couple of Athearn Genesis F7A units. I never paid that much attention to the factory installed lights until now when I am installing LEDs to replace the incandescent bulbs.
The F7A shell has an opening and a lens cap for a rear light, but Athearn never installed a rear light.
Any thoughts on why this was the case?
Rich
Alton Junction
Money? That is to say they saved a dime or two.
The newer run Genesis do have a 1.5 volt bulb installed . I just did a DCC upgrade and added LED's for all of the lights. Had to remove the bulb, there was not a lens, other than the bulb sticking out of the housing a bit..
The bulbs were a real bear to remove due to the glue that holds them into the loco. Broke most of them when I removed them.
woodone The newer run Genesis do have a 1.5 volt bulb installed . I just did a DCC upgrade and added LED's for all of the lights. Had to remove the bulb, there was not a lens, other than the bulb sticking out of the housing a bit.. The bulbs were a real bear to remove due to the glue that holds them into the loco. Broke most of them when I removed them.
I'm in the process of doing the same thing, replacing the incandescents with LEDs.
Yeah, the Athearn bulbs are a real pain.
Rich, I don't know how you are doing your lights .
The thing that I did was to use fiber optic cable. I used a single strand of 1.5 MM cable. I then used surface mount LED's with the wires attached and used heat shrink to hold the LED to the cable.
Works well and the 1.5 MM cable fits into the opening were the light bulbs were. You may have to file the hole a bit as sometimes there is still some glue in the opening and the cable will not slid into the hole.
woodone Rich, I don't know how you are doing your lights . The thing that I did was to use fiber optic cable. I used a single strand of 1.5 MM cable. I then used surface mount LED's with the wires attached and used heat shrink to hold the LED to the cable. Works well and the 1.5 MM cable fits into the opening were the light bulbs were. You may have to file the hole a bit as sometimes there is still some glue in the opening and the cable will not slid into the hole.
I am using surface mount LEDs as well. I strung them through the holes and applied Woodland Scenics white glue to hold them in place. That worked great. Once the LEDs were secured in place, I added resistors and put heat shrink tubing over the resistored wires.
Now I have to solder the wires onto the decoder and program them.