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Are number boards on modern loco's (1990+) no longer back lit??
The reason I ask is because I've seen a couple of photo's on rrpicturearchives.net of loco's with the long hood number boards painted out & new road numbers painted underneath.. I've also recently purchased a Kato GP35 & the number boards are solid when I would have expected them to be back lit on a top end model...
It depends on the loco, the RR, the model, lots of things. I'd say it would be best to check the prototypes pictures for the era and RR your modeling. I know I've modeled some both with rear number boards, and some without.
I don't remember ever seeing one with painted unlit front number boards but the rear can be lit or painted. ATSF painted the rear numbers on modern superfleet for example.
It depends on the loco, the RR, the model, lots of things. I'd say it would be best to check the prototypes pictures for the era and RR your modeling. I know I've modeled some both with rear number boards, and some without.
Unfortunately there aren't that many photo's of the modern shortline locomotives that I'm modelling and what photo's there are, are all daylight photo's so there's no way of telling if their back lit lol..
I don't remember ever seeing one with painted unlit front number boards but the rear can be lit or painted. ATSF painted the rear numbers on modern superfleet for example.
It's funny you should say that because the pictures I've seen with the painted unlit numbers below the original number boards were ATSF loco's..
The particular loco I'm modelling is a GP35 which I presume would have originally had lit boards, correct?
That said.. They are black numbers on a white background, so I'm not 100% sure??