Before I tear into the guts engine front is long hood end. Reverse direction and short hood headlight is intermitent. Loose connection?
What vintage Athearn? Is this a DC or DCC engine? If these are old engines with incandescent bulbs, save yourself another job by replacing them with LEDs while you're in there.
Intermittent bulbs are almost always a loose connection.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
NCE dcc. Factory decoder.
I assume you've changed the lighting CVs then, since normally the default decoder setting is the headlight is only on in the direction of travel. Maybe check the CVs re lighting options. Maybe the intensity is set too low so the light is just barely coming on then dropping out or something.
did a factory reset. then the pronlem showed up.
If the light is truly intermittent, just remove the shell and examine the wiring connections.
It is interesting that the lighting apparently worked fine until you did a reset to factory defaults. Not sure if that offers any clue.
What do you have in mind when you say "tear into the guts"? That sounds somewhat radical at this point.
Rich
Alton Junction
If by intermittent you mean when the engine is in reverse the rear light goes off and on sort of randomly (it normally would be off when going forward) then I agree you should take the shell off (not hard to do) and just look. It's possible a wire to the rear light has come loose - maybe it's touching the connection but isn't soldered in place anymore, so sometimes loses connection. You could also try another bulb or LED by touching the leads to the lightboard connections and see if that new light works. If so, it's unlikely to be a problem with the decoder or lightboard.
Actually the problem was my test track had gotten dirty and power was cutting out. The engine had enough momentum that it would start up before stopping completely. The forward headlight was not visible from where I was set up so I didn't know it was both ends. Learning the vaguries of DCC is a long curve.
Oh yeah.
Glad you solved your problem.
ndbprr Actually the problem was my test track had gotten dirty and power was cutting out. The engine had enough momentum that it would start up before stopping completely. The forward headlight was not visible from where I was set up so I didn't know it was both ends. Learning the vaguries of DCC is a long curve.
To see the front/rear lights I have a mirror angled at each end of my test track.