[Victor Meldrew]

Chris,

A couple of questions;

1 - what is the problem with the lights? - if they are simply not working, it could be that the decoder is plugged in the wrong way round.
2 - what manufacturer is the RS3 from? Different manufacturers have different solutions to fitting DCC. You shouldn't have to just replace the whole board with a specified decoder make if you don't want to.

VM

 

[Victor Meldrew]

Chris,

Does the loco not have an 8 pin socket for the decoder to plug in to?

If not, and you are 'hardwiring' the decoder, as long as the existing bulbs are 12v (Proto 2000 for one have a habit of putting lower voltage ones in), you can bypass the resistors and just connect one side of each bulb to the blue wire, the other side of the front light to the white, and the other side of the rear light to the yellow wire. Just make sure all these connections are isolated from each other as well as the track and motor supplies!

VM.

 

[Victor Meldrew]

Sounds strange - if you have both yellow and white wires, this suggests it is a 2 function decoder, in which case the lights should only be illuminated in the direction of travel, not both on at the same time.

This should be the default setting, but have you changed any of the CV's in the decoder - some times it may be worthwhile doing a 'reset' and trying again.

Which Lenz decoder are you using?

 

[Victor Meldrew]

Chris,
Do you mean an LE1000? If so, this is a one function decoder you are using, so you cannot have directional lights. You can only switch the lights on or off with F0.

To get directional lights, you need a two function decoder. These will have a yellow wire for the feed to the rear light (white to the front, and blue is common). Try an NCE D13SR from Digitrains - I have had good results in some Proto 2000 locos that have similar mechanisms to Atlas.
VM

 

[Victor Meldrew]

Chris,

This can't be a Lenz 1000 if it has a yellow wire - the pics on the Lenz website only shows white and blue. Even if it is another type of decoder, you should still be able to get directonal lights by connecting the white to the front, yellow to the back and blue to common.

Have you checked that you don't have any 'false feeds' on any wires? How about resetting the decoder to factory defaults - the instructions to tell you what to put into CV8. This may cure any accidental remapping that could also be a cause of your problem.

VM