Lionel Vision Hudson classification lights question ???

I think it just comes to how Lionel's tooling was made for each respective locomotive.

The original 700E's class lights were made to look close to the real class light arrangement on the real J1e's, and not meant to be illuminated.

The J3a tooling was introduced in 2001 as one of Lionel's first locomotives to release after their full move of production to China. The class lights on these models were made to be illuminated and were likely placed as such to ease wiring of the bulbs.

The previous VISION 700E of 2010 had almost the same class mount look as the original 700E, but it was modified to fit LED bulbs to get them to illuminate, and it looks like the new VISION J1e will have a similar method. I do agree this looks much better than the J3a's, and I'm not just saying that since the J3a's pretty much never wore them IRL.

Technically, they’re mounted high, on the smoke box front ring. Brackets are fastened to the outer ring, and then the lamps are bolted to the bracket. Wiring was run outside, to conduit piping alongside the brackets. On models, it’s hard to get this feature 100% perfect because the wiring has to come through the smoke box front. All the manufacturers technically get it wrong, but there’s really not a good way to get it 100% correct. ….on the real locomotives, the lamp straddles between the top of the smoke box outer ring, and the top of the boiler…..hope that helps …

Pat

If you want to get a better idea of how it’s supposed to look, take a look at the 3001 Mohawk at Elkhart In. The front of the L3 Mohawks ( non Selkirk smoke box door ) are practically twins to the J class Hudsons. ……that’s how they’re supposed to be mounted, but again, it’s hard to model that & have them illuminated…..

Pat