Number boards

[Coal Valley BNSF]

Hi,

I know the two brown wires are the speaker wires but can anybody tell me what the other 4 wires are for? How do you hook up the number boards on a HO Athearn Genesis and Scaletrains?

Thanks

[G8B4Life]

If your talking about an LM-2S (not likely), then the other four wires on the 6 pin harness are outputs 5 and 6 (Green and Violet) and inputs 1 and 2 (White and Yellow).

If your talking about an LM-3S, then the other four wires on the 6 pin harness are outputs 5 and 6 (Green and Violet), an input (White) and a negative (Yellow).

How to wire up the number boards on an Athearn Genesis or Scaletrains is heavily dependent on how your wiring up the model in the first place. Are you taking out the factory motherboard(s) and hardwiring the LM in or are you using a 21 to 9 pin adapter harness?

[Coal Valley BNSF]

 Thanks for the reply!  I am using 21 to 9 pin adapter harness from TCS

[Coal Valley BNSF]

I am using LM-3S

[G8B4Life]

Ok, so using a harness and not hardwiring it's quite likely you won't be able to get the number boards working; just a forewarning.

This recent thread is relevant (https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,1448.0.html) as it comes to a conclusion that has been talked about here before; that the light that is the subject of the thread (in this case the number boards) is not accessible unless you use the correct 21 pin decoder for the motherboard as the light is controlled by logic, not by an amplified output. I don't know about Athearn Gensis but Scaletrains certainly fall into that category of lights controlled by logic and not an amplifed output.

Essentially what you'll have to do is trace where the number board lights go on the motherboard. If they don't go straight to a pin on the 21 pin header (except for maybe a resistor in line) then it's likely it's a logic output and if so to get them working for RailPro you'll have to disconnect them from the motherboard and hardwire them to the LM.

[Coal Valley BNSF]

Thank you for your help!