Double ended ditchligts? How to?

[TiVoPrince]

Ordered
a couple of Atlas HO Gensets.  I know, waffles flying everywhere.  Era and scale shift, oh my.  Hay, its still California after all.

Now I need to devise how to get working ditchlights on the front and rear.  Should I hold out for a specialty decoder?  Maybe use a regular decoder for front ditchlights and a 'sistered' lighting only decoder for the rear ditchlights?  Something else entirely?  I'm at a loss to make a fully informed decision without some assistance from you experts.

All in all I would like to have a sound option pathway for the future if that is practical.   Installing sound immediately would be excellent if is practical.  Possibly not so much an issue for right now, since triple Cummins sound files may not be available tomorrow, or even next week. 

Any useful advice and counsel is welcome as I have been away from the HO scene for awhile...

[Jim Starbuck]

Tivo,

Are you wanting the ditchlights to oscillate or simply have on/off control at each end?

If you don't need oscillation, you can use micro SMD LEDs and a simple four funtion decoder.  If you wire each pair of D/L LEDs in series, you can wire each pair to one of the two spare function pads on the decoder with the appropriate resistor. You could end up with something like this: F0= headlight, F1=rear headlight, F3=front D/Ls, F4=rear D/Ls.
If you use rule 17 dimming, the headlights can be made to dim directionally. (my personal favorite)
The D/Ls could also be mapped to be directional along with being able to toggle them on or off using the function buttons on the throttle,
I installed front and rear D/Ls on an N scale GP15-1 like this and it works just fine.
Oscillation could be done but it would require either a six function decoder or two N-gineering ditchlight simulators.

I'm not familiar with the Atlas Gensets. Would you need to add the ditchlight detail castings as well?

Jim

[TiVoPrince]

Tivo,

Are you wanting the ditchlights to oscillate or simply have on/off control at each end?

If you don't need oscillation, you can use micro SMD LEDs and a simple four funtion decoder.  If you wire each pair of D/L LEDs in series, you can wire each pair to one of the two spare function pads on the decoder with the appropriate resistor. You could end up with something like this: F0= headlight, F1=rear headlight, F3=front D/Ls, F4=rear D/Ls.
If you use rule 17 dimming, the headlights can be made to dim directionally. (my personal favorite)
The D/Ls could also be mapped to be directional along with being able to toggle them on or off using the function buttons on the throttle,
I installed front and rear D/Ls on an N scale GP15-1 like this and it works just fine.
Oscillation could be done but it would require either a six function decoder or two N-gineering ditchlight simulators.

I'm not familiar with the Atlas Gensets. Would you need to add the ditchlight detail castings as well?

Jim

Oscillating
on F4 but normally on would be a requirement.  Rule 17 dimming headlights certainly are highly desireable.  I'm unfamiliar with the Nginerring ditchlights though.  Looking at the website it looks like a tiny daughterboard circuitboard to be mounted inside a HO scale shell.  Hopefully it produces no/minimal heat so it would work mounted against the plastic shell.  I like that idea since mounting these to the shell could simplify ditchlight wiring signifigantly.  Use a Miniatronics miniature plug and away we go.  While I would expect a Digitrax or some other brand decoder to appear sometime in the near future, but I'm knd of impatient that way. 

Atlas Gensets are not yet released but the announcement can be found here http://www.atlastrainman.com/HOLoco/tmhogenset.htm front ditchlights are apparent and I would expect rears as they seem to be 'standard equipment' from NRE on the 3GS21B model.

Now off to plot how to create a 3GS21C from an couple of Atlas Genset shell plus an Athearn SD40/45.  Still can't figure out how to get a reasonable facsimilie of a MP20C from the 'SD40' abomonation released by Athearn...