The locos lights have now been installed at one end. As the loco will be used mainly with a push pull set I will leave the lights at the other end for the time being. I did have an issue with the headlights flashing whilst the loco was traveling in reverse but this has been vertualy elimanated when I discovered that there were an extra set of pickups on the trailing bogie. Anyway heres some pics..

Some of you will be fimilar with my APT and its flashing pantograph. I have wanted for a while to fit this to the rest of the AC's and with the new build I have taken this one step further. The APT uses a battery pack for the pan light but the 89 uses the power from the track. This is done by modifying the trailing bogie like this..

Its not a very good pic but you can just make out a reed switch mounted between the wheels. One end of the reed is soldered to the internal pick ups the other end sticks out of the top of the bogie ( black wire) ...

When reassembled the reed sits neatly between the axels...

When the loco passes over a fixed magnet the reed switch flashes a led. For testing the 89 has a white one sticking out of the rear cab windscreen and can be seen flashing here...

The plan is to fit a small blue led to the pantograph head to simulate arching. I will be adding a bridge rectifier to the circuit so that the led will work in each direction. This should also operate the effect if I change the layout to DCC.