I am building a 3 unit set of Athearn blue box U30c's. The two lead units will have working beacon/constant lighting. I am using an old Emrex lighting unit in the current lead unit, but it ballests the unit so it runs slower than a unmodified unit. Its been so many years since I speed matched units in a DC enviroment, I dont remember what resistors I used to achieve a slight speed reduction in one engine to match a unit with the lighting unit in it. In a perfect world I would just go buy another lighting unit, but Emrex has been gone for quite a few years and I havent come up with another lighting unit with Prime beacon effect that will slow the trailing unit down. I do need a 2nd lighting circuit soon if anybody comes across one in thier travels. The other option is to drop the $$ and put Tsunami's in both units as the will give the lighting effects along with sound. I am only hesitant as both of these units are fairly loud and it will be some time before they have enough run time to quiet down. Option 2 is two brand new lighting units from Richmond controls, supposedly he has LED's as small as a grain of rice bulb that will fit up inside the Details West RB106 lense casting and into the stock headlight holes on the Athearn diesel. I am waiting for pics as I have never seen LED's that small. I am used to working with 1.5vt micro bulbs and have a nice drawer full of them. Anybody seen some of the old Emrex circuits laying around? I would buy an entire engine to get the light circuit out of it. Anybody put sound in a noisy blue box engine, does the sound drowned out the typical Athearn growl these have?
LHS mechanic and geniune train and antique garden tractor nut case!
Unfortunately, you're asking about a product and technology that is so old very few people here will have ever heard of it -- including me, and I've been in the hobby for 50 years.
A Tsunami will be of little benefit to you unless you switch of DCC control.
I agree with the above comment regarding old technology. I believe that you have made the case for switching to DCC. I have a lot of Athearn BB SD40-2. Converting them to DCC is simple and very inexpensive. (About $18 for a Digitrax DH123 decoder.) I can have all of the lighting effects that I want through the decoder.
A Digitrax Zepher starter set will cost about $160 (Internet supplier), and less that $18 per locomotive for a mobile decoder, but no sound. If you want to spend the bucks for a Tsunami Sound Decoder, DCC is the best way to go.
Jim, Modeling the Kansas City Southern Lines in HO scale.
I completely forgot about just a simple dual mode decoder with special light effects. I believe TCS offers such a dual mode decoder. The local shop I do the repair work for offers these and recommends them over the digitrax decoders. I will look into this tomorrow evening when I am at the shop. I am planning on having DCC on my home layout once I get to the point of powering up the track. Probably will be zephyr with a tethered handheld as I dont want a base station set up other than for the program track. The Zephyr base would sit on my desk were the programing track will be. Mike
The Emrex circuits date from the late 80's/early 90's in vintage. About the same time Ibenlite was doing thier nice non dcc lighting circuits. Dont see them much anymore, even on the used market, and they are an awsome lighting circuit for analog DC layouts. With just the pair of engines right now, I really wish I could find just 1 more Emrex circuit and hold off spending the bigger dollers to convert to sound/dcc till I have to. Need to get started on benchwork yet this winter. Mike
Could it be as simple as putting a bridge rectifier in the loco between the pickups and the motor?
This would give a constant "drop" of about 1.4 volts. (lamp goes across the bridge if needed) Perhaps that's how the Emrex works ???
Just a possibility.
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net