Large Scale Central

What is the use of these lights on an EMD SW1500?

Prototypes
#1

For those that know (or would like to know), I’m interested in what these lights would be used for. What color would they be, and when would they be turned on?

I’ve googled EMD SW1500 and I did not see these lights ever turned on (at least for the first 30-40 images that i looked at). I also noticed that some images showed these lights while others didn’t.

I’m going to try to prototype these lights and am trying to pre-fit, gather the LEDs that I’m going to use, so I’m interested in when they’d be turned on and what color I should make them.

The image on the top is the front, and the bottom image is on the back (above the cab).

Thanks for the assistance.

#2

I believe those would be Marker/Classification lights. Phased out in the 1960’s

As for color http://trn.trains.com/railroads/abcs-of-railroading/2006/05/locomotive-classification-lights

#3

Thanks Dan. I’m finally starting to put all the pieces of the OpenRailways EMD SW1500 together and plan to put in a remote control (most likely a revolution since I have one in all of my other engines). So to plan out which light ports to carve out, I wasn’t sure if I needed to do anything with these outer lights. Looks like I’ll just paint them up as dummy lights. Thanks for the referenced link.

#4

Matt Kirichok said:

Thanks Dan. I’m finally starting to put all the pieces of the OpenRailways EMD SW1500 together and plan to put in a remote control (most likely a revolution since I have one in all of my other engines). So to plan out which light ports to carve out, I wasn’t sure if I needed to do anything with these outer lights. Looks like I’ll just paint them up as dummy lights. Thanks for the referenced link.

The use of those lights would depend on the railroad and era you model. While most are painted over or blanked out with a cover, some are still used today for other purposes.