I recently painted a Railking ES44 from the GE Evolution demo paint scheme to Canadian Pacific liveries. It ended up looking beautiful and I now have a CP ES44 with the 'golden beaver' logo and the green charging lights. Not 100% prototypical, I know, but it looks amazing on my Canadian themed layout.
Painting it properly involved disassembling the entire engine body. The re-assembly went smoothly and the engine works perfectly again, with the exception of the right ditch light. Those tiny LED boards for the ditch lights are very fragile, and unfortunately, one of the wire leads broke off when attempting to slot it back into the ditch light housing (which is a very tight fit).
For reference, this is MTH part number "AD-2103040001", according to the parts list for this engine. Part # 41 on this exploded diagram (Might include part #40 as well, hard to say).
So my question is: Is this repairable?
The obvious solution is to re-solder the wire onto the board, but the piece is so incredibly tiny that it would be difficult to get right. Also, the metal plate on the board where the wire was initially attached seems to have fallen off as well, so what exactly would I solder the wire to?
I've tried holding the tip of the red wire up to the tiny sliver of silver connector still present on the board when plugged into the engine while the ditch lights are on (difficult to do by the way, since the engine has to be moving forward for the lights to activate), but the LED remains off. Can I hook the leads up to a battery for easier testing when not connected to the engine? If so, what voltage of battery?
Alternatively, am I better off just getting a new LED? I assume this piece wouldn't cost too much, but finding the exact same item sounds difficult. Googling the part number yields no useful results.
Any help would be appreciated!
