Caution to all the tinkerers. I tried bending the front LED up a little to see if that helped with headlight & ditchlight brightness and doing so rendered it inoperable. I think I heard a crack when I did it and I think it was the LED itself. Should have known better as there really isn't any wiggle room at all with the lead length. Going to have to try soldering on a new one. Will either try a Yellow Glo LED from Miniatronics or I may have to rob one from the B unit.
I'm hoping FVM might come up with a fix for the ditch lights because I'm not sure how it could have gotten past QC and into production. It's really obvious, you can't miss it compared to the fuel tank which I wouldn't have noticed if someone here hadn't pointed out.
I'm thinking it may be the light tubes themselves - there's an quite a bit of light being thrown in on the track in front of the front truck....I need to investigate this further but we have guests at the moment and they want to see trains run Russ: Not a lot of wiggle room there - I managed to trash a board on one of mine - FVM got me a replacement immediately - can't fault them, it was my doing. As I recall, their LEDs are wired backward from what you'd expect - if the "flag" is on the right, put it on the left with a replacement. I tried that but with futility because I broke the board....
Thanks, Jim. I think you're right about it being the light tubes themselves. I put in a replacement Miniatronics (standard-size) LED and soldered it to the top of the board (I had to file down the LED flange at the top and push the whole light board back a little so the shell would still seat with the larger LED). This was to raise everything up a bit as it seemed the original LED might have been missing the tube ends a bit low, but not by much. However, doing this did not significantly change anything regarding brightness and I'm sure I just voided any warranty coverage in doing so.:uhoh: But, hey, I took one for the team in the name of tinkering!
And the rest of us tinkerer's appreciate it! Next time we meet up I'll buy you a double-double! Grilled onions?
Out of the box and on the move! I have another B unit on the way and will anxiously await for payday for another A unit!
Got mine yesterday and I LIKE them. They are a bit on the loud side and the ditch lights are poor at best. I did not have a lot of time to mess with them, but I could not get the shells off. Do I need to use the toothpick method or is there something I am missing ? Thanks....
Had the same problems. What I noticed was that the walkway catches on one of the motor tabs, from the light board. A small screwdriver, or x-acto blade, to push in motor tab will allow shell to be removed safely. I'll have to pull mine apart at least once more when my DCC decoders arrive. At least I will, if/when my right wrist decides to heal now!!
Oops....it appears you need to drill the holes for the ladder grabs straight back as the grabs themselves are skewed. Looks like I'll be using BLMA grabs instead as I didn't notice this until after I drilled the holes.hboy: I will also soon be posting a cautionary tale about trying to mess with the light tubes running to the ditchlights.
A few on line dealers now have stock FVM pics of the BNSF units, as well as the Maersk unit. Hard to say re the orange but they look good, especially the Maersk unit.
OK, once again in the name of tinkering, I did some exploratory surgery to see how the ditchlight pipes were run on the FVM GP60M. The front walkway piece is a separate part from the rest of the walkway but was held in place with some glue, making it a bit difficult to pop off. Once I had it off, one side of the light pipe came out of the bottom of the ditchlight housing OK with some gently prying but the other side fractured at the base when I tried to pry it free. It appears the light pipes and the lenses in the ditchlights are separate pieces as well. I tried painting the light pipes white in hopes that this would help increase light intensity but, unfortunately, doing so robbed the light entirely. This is the second time I ever tried painting light pipes and I had poor results both times. I'm posting this so somebody does not repeat what I've done.
Too late, Russ. I painted the tubes white with the same results - no light. So 129 is no longer leading. We'll try removing the paint today. I suspect if you want bright ditchlights you'll need to add some LEDs. But given the light board I'm not sure just how. With a PNP board there are pads for additional lighting - but this is not a PNP board. In other news, according to FVM's FaceBook page, the H2 BNSF's are shipping to dealers now - the November release is H3 - two A's and a B - hello Mr. Wallet.
I started out with a pre-order for an AB set of warbonnets, when I saw them I had to order another AB pair to make an ABBA set, then an online dealer started taking reservations for the Maersk unit, gotta have one of those, but while I was at it I reserved an AB set of the swoosh scheme. Next day another dealer got in undecorated units so so I decided I had to have an ABA set of Westfalen & Gulf units. I'm going to end up with ten of the things (so far).:wideeyes:
Yes, that Maersk unit is pretty tempting! Although it was short lived and was painted for a publicity photo shoot, it would sure look good working my (primarily Maersk themed) container port.
Did anyone happen to see that there a note about the first Maersk unit being a darker blue but they will be releasing a lighter blue one down the road? I read it on the website of the train pusher in Brooklyn.
I saw that too. I reminds me of all the whining that happened when Matt released the original BNSF ES44 units a few years ago. He ended up making the orange brighter because the masses said his original color was off and didn't match up with the almighty Kato units (who said they were correct anyway...). I don't buy that, but whatever. If he matched the blue to a color chip from BNSF, which I believe he said he did, how is that wrong...I'd bet money the sun had a lot to do with the color becoming lighter over time and that is what everyone remembers. Sorry, rant over... Brian
