Hello All,

The head and tail lights of the Dutch/Swiss RAm TEE 1 feature one white and one red light bulb, which feed into a light conductor to illuminate the external lights. The white bulb should light all three lights, while the red bulb has a cover that should make sure that only 2 lights are lit, and that the top light remains dark when the red bulb is lit.

This does not work 100% to my satisfaction. The top red light is certainly much less bright than the two lower lights, but it is not completely dark.

Are there any tricks to improve this ? I use the train in both directions, so I can't use black paint to cover the top light.

Gregor

Hi Gregor, this is an old problem. You can try to reduce the brightness of the red lamp connecting a Zener diode in series with the lamp. The Zener voltage will be the tension you will reduce to the lamp, so you can try with 3V2 or 3V7, 6V3 etc. until you're satisfied.
Regards,

Very interesting. I have the exact same problem as Gregor with my 515/815 Triebwagen set (3028 + 4028). My idea was to cut the light conductor that leads up to the top headlight, mask the bottom half with dark paper or black insulating tape, and supply the top light with a separate light source (miniature bulb or white LED). I got as far as cutting the light conductor and then began to feel like Gregor - courage left me... [:(] Yet I'm still planning to come up with a more satisfactory solution - one day... Maybe I'll trawl the M* spare part lists to see if M* themselves have developed something a bit more clever for one of their more recent products.