Just purchased a USA SD-40 and have a question. Before I call USA Trains, I’m wondering about the marker lights. Aren’t those lights supposed to be red/green depending on direction? I thought anyone out there that owns one could chime in. I thought all USA’s had that feature. I know the manual states “red” markers but I am thinking I have seen videos of these SD40’s with red and green. I had and sold SD40’s from earlier runs and thought they had red/green markers. Mine are only red. Do I have a bad loco? Or is this a change USA made from previous runs? Thanks for any input
I don’t own any brand new ones however all the USA locos I have do switch from green to red or vice versa depending on direction.
The SD40-2 always came with just red.
Here is a excerpt from the review in Garden Railways magazine August 2000.
I’m looking at some real crappy old pictures of the SD40 I had. I sure cannot be definitive on this looking at the pictures but it may have been red on the trailing end and off on the leading end? I also thought for sure they were a dim green leading but perhaps not.
Besides that was over 15yrs ago and the only other guys I can think of right now that have 1 or 5 or more already cut up and gutted them right out of the box. Then probably smashed the box and threw it away.
Yes, the USA Sd40-2 only has red lights.
There is much confusion about the actual purpose of these lights. On most diesel locomotives, the red/green lights are actually classification lights.
For trains that were too long to run as one unit (typically long passenger trains departing terminals with fixed length platforms), they were often split into two sections. Green lights on the lead engine indicated the train was the first of two sections. The red class lights were not markers, but rather they were illuminated on the front end of the engine indicating it was the second section of that train. There were also white classification lights indicating an “extra” or “special” run that wasn’t listed on the timetable.
In some cases class lights have been converted to be used as marker lights, but for most SD40s, their class lights were plated over many many years ago. Instead of marker lights, its common practice for trailing freight locomotive just to have the rear-facing headlamp on dim.
So anyways, out in the wild, I doubt you would ever find a locomotive with illuminated green class lights on one end and illuminated red class lights (pretending to be marker lights) on the other end.