What I did for any lighting that I needed was do a search on Amazon and found all kind of LED lights,3mm and 5mm that had free shipping,some came from Japan. I went to Radio Shack and bought resistors from 1-Mohm down to 100-kohm. For power supply I used an old cell phone charger,cut the cell phone plug adapter off and connect the power wires, the positive to a resistor and to the positive side of the LED and the other LED connection to the ground. I started with a high resistor and kept going down till I ended up with the brightness I needed.You can connect a lot of LED's through 1 resistor.Keep the resistor out in the open to help keep it cool and you can light everything you need to. LED's stay cooler than incandescent lights,and last a lot longer. I made a end of train light using the track power, a 22-kohm resistor and a 3v 2mm tower light that I found at the LHS. You can get a bulk supply of LED's for cheap so you can experiment,if you burn one out,go to a bigger resistor. Just another idea to try for lighting.

I have a Bachmann F7 A diesel that I have noticed,when I service it,there has been what I would describe as copper anti- seize around where the axle rides in the truck. I thought it might have been some wear off of the contacts and didn't think anything about it. Today,when I was cleaning and lubing it,I took a really close look and found that the axle was actually wearing down where it rides in the truck. The metal is worn,not the plastic truck. I use Labelle 102 on the axle where it rides in the truck and today after cleaning I used 106 grease. I run my trains sometimes for 5 hours in a day and sometimes they don't run for a week. I have been servicing them about once a month or sooner. They are all about a year old. Am I using the wrong lube ? Not servicing them frequently enough ? Or is this something that wears out normally.If I run them that much,do I need to buy replacement trucks in bulk ?

I have run into this problem and it has been dirty wheels that has been causing it,guess the engine doesn't get a good signal. Clean the wheels off with some alcohol,problem solved. What I have noticed is that the the 2 F units I have are the ones with sound and original pc boards in them, are the ones that it happens to. The ones that I replaced the boards in,to get rid of the hum, doesn't happen to them.

I hope this is what you need.                                                                                                                                                         <iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://s1361.photobucket.com/user/mechanicstan/embed/slideshow/"></iframe>

While we are talking about "contacting customer service" let me tell you what happened in my situation and why I joined this forum. When I first had my problem with running a sound and non sound equipped diesels in a consist, I thought there was something wrong with the non sound unit. I went to the repair request form and filled out, in detail, what was happening when I ran them together and of the noise from the non sound unit. I then mailed the unit back to be repaired. In the meantime I had received another dcc non sound engine that had the same noise as the one I sent in. I had sent a e mail about the noise in the new engine and if at all possible just to send me the parts to repair my new unit when they returned the one back to me,I could just fix it myself and save the money on postage. In a little while, I received a phone call from customer service that my engine was on it's way back and that they found nothing wrong with it. During that phone call I should have been told that you cannot run the sound and non sound units together without adjusting CVs, I should have been told that the sound of the motor hum was normal in the dcc equipped engines. It wasn't until I had joined this forum that I found out what the difference was. In my e mailing, I should have been told by the repair center or customer service that this was normal operation of the units, but wasn't. Contacting customer service did nothing.

Just in case anyone wanted to know, this is the reply from Bachmann parts.

- #H615X-00A01-PR-B: Truck for DCC

- #76005-0F301-B: Truck for DCC Sound.

The difference are in the shapes of the contacts and the truck frame.

The parts list has an older version that had a pancake motor mounted to the truck, not available, but these are listed as for DCC and the other DCC sound, both pictures look to be the same, both have the new style power pickups with black and red wires. That's why I was wondering if they are different ratios. Might be wrong pictures shown. They also list a truck, regular, for older generation, only black wire on it.

Parts listing for the F7 diesel has different trucks listed for DCC #H615X-00A01-PR-B and DCC sound #76005-0F301-B, what is the difference,gear ratio?

I read posts about people that can't figure how to take their engines apart to service,lube them when needed. That post about static was posted for them. Most people here know the damage that static can do to electronic boards. It was meant for for those that don't know. The mistake that I was surprised that no one caught was to ground their motor before working on it. I will give an example.....someone that doesn't know reads that post and connects a ground to their engine, finally gets the shell off and then needs to go do something. When they come back to continue working on it after walking across their carpet and reaches down to pick up their engine,ZAP, they just discharged the static build up in their body to the board sitting on top of the frame. They need to know that your body needs to be grounded first to disperse the build up before touching what they are working on. It was meant for those that don't know.

Paint dried,running through the turnouts no problem. If it wears off,next time i will paint it with POR-15,the gear heads out there will know what that is, that will never wear off. I don't switch tracks that often,so I'm happy again. No more problems to fix.I really thank all that have offered options to fix,and every one was good ,but I chose the easy way out. One last thing, I am really surprised that no one caught what not to do in my static electricity post. Will be lurking to see who's the next post to be deleted. Surprise what stays and what goes.

NMRA gauge is on my list of things to buy and the coupler height gauge. I have replaced all the wheels with Bachmann 33" metal wheels #42904. I would say the turnouts are probably out of gauge as old as they are. The paint is drying now,I think that will solve my problem.

Cutting the rails,I am not sure how far up the rail the feed from underneath is,it might be all the way to the end of the rail, and I am worried that the short isolated rail might not have enough support and might loosen up. jbrock27 that is where I thought it was shorting out to begin with, but as you can see from the picture, right in front of the screwdriver, the marks where the short was happening.Going to use some paint and that should fix my problem. Thanks again for all of the advice.

Correction, need to cut both rails because when its on the other rail the wheel can come in contact with the opposite polarity. In the picture,the rail that the screwdriver is on and the one below it.

I think I understand what to cut now, The rail that the back of the wheel is coming into contact with, not the rail it's on, makes sense now. In the picture,it would be the rail under the screwdriver.

Cutting the rails wont stop the shorting. I did a little experiment, I took 2 straight track and laid them an inch apart.With track power to just 1 section and with the engine straddling the gap, there is power to the other section of track through the engine. No matter where I would cut the track,it would be fed power through the engine as soon as the engine went across the cut. I would need to make the isolated space longer than the wheelbase of the engine to stop the short and then the engine would stop on the isolated section. Nail polish,I think,will be my best bet.