Marker lights revisited

[Martijn Meerts]

While searching for prototype pictures of an EF65-1000 (to see why Tomix added red road number boards when the locomotive was in renewed JR-Freight livery (turned out there are prototypes with red road number boards ...)) I came across the following site:

 

http://er-giken-ceo.cocolog-shizuoka.com/photos/led/img_19701.html

 

Some guy who's added marker lights to a variety of locomotives. He's also added a single marker light in some cases. Unfortunately there's no pictures of how they're installed, but it's interesting to see a Japanese person adding marker lights =)

[CaptOblivious]

Aren't the colors of the number boards indicative of the loco's home depot?

 

The site you found is very interesting. I wish there were some installation photos. The single-light cases reinforce what we'd inferred about marker light use here:

http://www.jnsforum.com/index.php/topic,894.msg18618.html#msg18618

[Martijn Meerts]

Since that thread was posted, we've had some new people, maybe some of them know more about the marker lights in Japan ;)

 

When are they used (considering there's so few push-pull combo's which have a locomotive), when is the single light used etc.

[CaptOblivious]

Also, I notice that the author helpfully indicates which current-regulating diodes he picked. I've noticed that in Japan, CRDs are more popular than resistors for limiting the current to LEDs. But I can't find the CRDs they use anywhere; this author posts the part numbers, which has helped me find data sheets, but still no distributors in the US. Could be very helpful if we could find a source for these.

[Martijn Meerts]

I also wonder if there are decoders that have a feature to turn on single marker lights.. Probably using a additional function output or something, but not many come with more than 2 (direction dependent) function outputs I believe.

[CaptOblivious]

I also wonder if there are decoders that have a feature to turn on single marker lights.. Probably using a additional function output or something, but not many come with more than 2 (direction dependent) function outputs I believe.

 

Thankfully, decoders for Kato locos offer at least four, and as many as eight function outputs. Otherwise, you'd have to make sacrifices. Presuming that two functions are taken up by two sets of headlights, you would need at least one more function to enable the singleton markerlights (controlling two LEDs, one on each end), and one more function to enable all markerlights on (controlling the other two LEDs). Five functions total are necessary for full control: Directional headlights, directional marker lights, and shunting markerlights. That's a lot of functions!