Heljan '00' 05 Lighting

[Dad-1]

I've got a problem and can't see how I can make the Heljan 05 bi-directional lighting
work via a Lenz silver mini. I'm trying to repair a friend's version where he has burnt out
both the original Hatton's 6 pin decoder and the DCC socket !! He has never seen it running
since bought in 2018. For personal reasons nothing has been done until I said I'd fix it !!

Burnout was due to no insulation at the contact ends of the motor which 'floated' until it
shorted out against the body, it also wrecked the motor.
I could be wrong as I've never had one, but believe these may have dual colour LED's.

Now it's running with a new motor and just motor connections to a slave spare Hornby decoder
I wish to fix the lighting. Easy ONLY using 'Blue +' I can feed front lighting using the white- lead,
then again Blue+ plus the yellow- lead to get rear red lights, but these would switch off
as one changes direction and the second (Dual) colour needs to light up.

The loco has 3 wires going to each end's lights. Yellow; blue; green.
Co joined Separate Yellows on one tag
Co Joined green & blue attached to two different tags

These are designed to work on DC. I may be wrong, but think some diodes must have been on the
burnt out 6 pin DCC socket. Trying to work out what I can do. Any lighting whizz kids ?????

Geoff T.

[Ironduke]

Hi Geoff,
is this any help https://www.youchoos.co.uk/Index-Resour ... HeljanCL05 ?

otherwise you really need to work out what those yellow, green and blue wires actually do. Have you got a multimeter?

[SRman]

With my Heljan 05 and 07 diesel shunters, I have altered the lighting to show permanently at both ends. Both locos have one red and one white light at each end, but when shunting in real life, they would show both lights at both ends at the same time (the drivers don't want to be constantly changing lights every time they change direction).

Out of the box, with function F0 selected, these locos show one white lamp at the leading end and one red lamp at the trailing end, reversing this when the direction is changed. I used Decoder Pro connected to my programming track through my NCE command station to simply tick the boxes that turned the lights on in both directions at the same time.

This is the 05 with only the white light illuminated, before I had fiddled with the settings on the decoder.


Power Added to Tracks - First Test Runs by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr


This shot of one of my 07 locos shows both red (on the right, not very clear) and white (left) lights illuminated.

[Dad-1]

Thanks guys,

Until last evening I had no idea what lights worked and how, because I had
no instructions, the decoder socket was burnt out and I'd never seen it running !
I found a YouTube video by 'Strathpeffer Junction' from 2018 where he was putting
a decoder in where at the end he showed the lights.
So no twin colour LED's and only 2 lamps at each end work, the outer ones. Today
I'll be testing what colour wires work each lamp.
SRman, I agree that used for shunting all lit at both ends would be a sensible working
set-up. Running off F0 should be ideal.
Playing with wires later. I rightly claim that once you get past the most basic principal
I'm lost, in fact I'm never comfortable once past red/black/green for points.

Geoff T.

[Dad-1]

Bless Heljan,

Confusing if you want to remove the original decoder socket.
I wasn't going to risk a Lenz decoder while I played around !!

An interesting choice of colours !!
Yellow is the + feed for both lights
Blue is the - feed to the white light
Green is the - feed to the Red light

So the cross match is :-
Decoder Blue + to loco yellow
Decoder White - to loco blue
Decoder Yellow - to loco green

All works correctly through function F0
Now to remove the Hornby decoder and finally wire in the Lenz Mini
and finish some minor cosmetic repairs like cab steps and fix a coupler.

Geoff T.

[pete12345]

With my Heljan 05 and 07 diesel shunters, I have altered the lighting to show permanently at both ends. Both locos have one red and one white light at each end, but when shunting in real life, they would show both lights at both ends at the same time (the drivers don't want to be constantly changing lights every time they change direction)

Directional lighting really is a relic from DC, where a simple diode allows lights to be shown in the forward direction. But in real life, drivers wouldn't necessarily be turning lights on and off every time they change direction- even less so if they physically have to go and alter an oil lamp! If you have working lights, it makes sense to have every light on its own, non directional function so you can control them independently.

[Bigmet]

...If you have working lights, it makes sense to have every light on its own, non directional function so you can control them independently.

Or there's the heretical alternative, applicable to the BR steam and early diesel period, just turn off any fitted lighting! Meets the KISS criterion perfectly.

(The feeble light output was not visible in good daylight, and I have yet to see a good system for reliably lighting the four or six oil lamp positions on steam, which provides for the necessity of physically shifting the oil lamps about.)

[pete12345]

Or there's the heretical alternative, applicable to the BR steam and early diesel period, just turn off any fitted lighting! Meets the KISS criterion perfectly.

(The feeble light output was not visible in good daylight, and I have yet to see a good system for reliably lighting the four or six oil lamp positions on steam, which provides for the necessity of physically shifting the oil lamps about.)

There is that. Really lights make more sense on American and modern British modelling where you have multiple fixed lights which do various things. For the UK, I reckon a dot of luminous paint on the lens would do the trick. You could then have the lamps locate on little pins on the loco and move them around... if you had a shunting pole and a steady hand that is.