WE HAVE FIRE in the Fire Box and Steam in the Boiler. Completed assembly last night and did an optest. Checked out pretty well. The Ground lights and Cab lights using SMD LEDs really came out nice. Rule 17. The double SMD type 0805 Head Light LED work really well. You can see two individual light like bulbs. Whistle steam and Smoke unit work well and a fantastic smoker. The sounds are really nice with the enclosed speaker and the brass shell. The Fire Box effect is really sharp and the add bonus is that it reflect like ashpan glow under the chassis. Because of the gap between shell and chassis it bleeds through. So don't have to do any additional circuit for ashpan, though I may add some lighting off the motor lead as an added affect when under power.
The initial failures were the White classification markers. Green worked, but no whites. And the steam chest steam not a good feature.
So this morning I tackled the white classifications. I had wired them in series like the green. MTH uses series markers in PS-2 and 3. Parallel for other LEDs. Turns out the white did not have enough voltage to run in series on PS-3. So I switched them to parallel.
So now I have 4 state classification on the engine. Off, Wht, Green and if I turn white and green on together, the forward lens are white and the side lens green. Probably not prototypical but neat look.
As far as the steam chest, need to work on that some more. If I block the main stack outlet I get a nice steam effect out of the tubing. Actually in sync with chuff. I am going to install a washer with small outlet on main stack and see how that works. I also need to shorten the path the smoke takes to get to the chest. Right now the path of least resistance is out the stack.
Pretty pleased over all. Thanks PAT for the help with chassis swap and detailing. G
