Upgrading F3 ABA PS1 to PS3

If you want classification lights, then you will have to drill them out.  They're 2mm LED's you'll be using, so logically the drill should be very close to 2mm.

Thanks, John.  That's what I was looking for.

I see in the PS3 kits that there are both red and green LEDs for the classification lights.  I'm going to guess these are not red/green LEDs.  I "think" I understand the meaning of what each color means (green = scheduled train, red = end of train (correct?)), if that is the case and I had only the ABA unit running around the track, the leading A unit nose would display green and the trailing A unit nose would display red.  Is that accurate?  If so, what I decided I wanted to run the ABA in the other direction?  The lights would be incorrect then.

Thoughts on that, if it made any sense?

Well, the purists will give you a whole lecture on class light colors and their meaning.  When I'm doing custom lighting, I use bi-color LEDs to change colors for direction and just have green in the front and red in the rear.  I refer you to the following page.

Locomotive classification lights

John,

Thanks, that's exactly what I was thinking of doing.  Can I add the bi-color in place of the PS3 - supplied single-color LEDs?   

Also, after doing many searches on here and seeing some posts, I believe what you are saying.  I read that article before I posted too which is why I was wondering about the ABA going in either direction without any cars.

Not really.  MTH markers have there own output which is not directional.  When doing this with TMCC conversions you can drive them off of the Headlight wires and get the effect.  With MTH if you drive them off the Headlight circuit you will get Rule 17 too.

MTH does this with GG-1 but they use a separate board to control the LEDs and operating panto.   I would keep it simple for your first upgrade.  You get green and red LED with kit.   If you want to go in and try a modification later it won't be hard to do, but it won't work like custom mods with TMCC.  G

George is correct, it'll take a bit of doing to get the bi-color LED's working with PS/3.  Too bad as it was easier with PS/2, you could tap off the headlight outputs to drive them.  I know the LED outputs of the PS/3 board are driving more than one LED at times, do it's possible that something could be done with some custom wiring, but it's a science project at this point.

Thank you guys.  Looks like I'll just stick with with it as-is for now, especially since this is my first attempt at an upgrade.  

I'll post pictures once I start the process.