I hope this is in the right section.

I recently won a box of C track in an auction for a very good price.
Upon looking through the box, I found a piece of track with a colour light signal attached.
So I coupled it up to my programming track - it lit up green! but I couldn't find a way to turn it red.
I turned the track over and found it was in fact two pieces of track with a MASS of wires (see pictures).

Now I'm not interested in track control, which I presume this is, so can anyone tell me if I can take the signal off
and use it on my layout without the train control gubbins?

xyz 1.jpg (1,225kb) downloaded 16 time(s).
xyz 2.jpg (1,349kb) downloaded 13 time(s).

xyz 4.jpg (1,210kb) downloaded 10 time(s).


Don't know why it's only showing one picture instead of all four.

Hi Dave
I may be wrong, of course but seems to me you are dealing with, a first generation electronic Märklin signal

They were delivered in a box (of course) BUT the box contained a strap used for programming (a piece of metal going through the plastic rectangle supporting the electronics).
The idea was to prepare your CS3, CS2, CS1 with an address for the new signal

then power up the signal while STILL in the box and you had a few seconds to issue the digital MM2 command. Then the signal would write the given address and leave the programming mode.
If not received in good time (30s or so I don't really remember), the signal would enter into demo mode red, green, orange, white, etc

Of course, unpacking the signal would force it in the operation mode (no more address learning)

No learning strap?
Look at the plastic base support of the electronic module. There are two holes facing a contact zone on the PCB I am sure you can manage a fake strap to fool the signal into learning mode just once
On one of your photos we can see the electronic module. Circled in red are the 2 locations to strap during the *address learning phase


Cheers
Jean

Went in the room. Tried JohnJean's suggestion first but no joy.
In fact the signal wouldn't light up even without the strap (it did last night).

So following Henrik's idea. I went to disconnect all the wires - and what a mess!
There were wires attached in the normal fashion, some also soldered and horrors!! Some even glued!!

So not being into electronics (it's as much as I can do to solder a resistor to a wire LOL) I gave up.
I've binned the wires and gubbins but kept the signal. It'll do as a dummy (I was intending to just have dummy signals anyway).
And TBH I'm not disappointed too much - I got over £1300's worth of track (at MSL prices) for £70! Even got a MS1 in the box.

There's another auction soon for some signals including some Marklin mfx ones so I'll have a punt on them.