Go to the horse's mouth

Kevin, 

I had a similar situation, an early BLI loco. I asked their techservice for a diagram of the wires to the tender's plug, and the reply was: 1) no diagrams; but 2) from one end of the plug to the other this is what the wires do.

My plug has six wires, not seven, so I won't repeat what they told me, except that in addition to the four wires you mention there are two wires for rail pick-up in the loco. 

Strong suggestion: e-mail techservice at BLI, tell them what the model is, and ask them the same questions you posted here. Based on my experience I think you will have a pleasant result.

If you don't get an answer, then remove the boiler from the loco and try to trace the wires.

DrJolS

The seventh wire

How many individual lights on the boiler?  One common would do it, but for each separately controlled light, you need a wire.  My guess is you have two lights on the boiler.  With that in mind, a few continuity checks should identify which is which. With the plugs it is easier said than done.  

When these came out, very little info about the engines was the common standard.  Plus, no maintenance was planned for in the design.  Thus you have this situation, no circuit diagram, very little indentification on the board and no color segregation of the wires.  Obviously the model was never going to require any attention.

BLI Wiring

Wiring at the engine/tender connector is: the two outside wires are track power from the wheels; the next wires are motor power; the middle wires (2, 3, or 4 depending on the model) are for lights, smoke power, or chuff signal. You can partially verify this by tracing the path of the tender power pickup wiring to the outside wires on the connector.

Steve Hoxie

Pensacola FL

Thanks

Thanks everyone for the guidance.  I do have an email out to BLI but have not heard anything back.  I sent it several weeks ago.  I'll send it again and see if they get back to me.

I'm not positive on the number of lights, but it seems to only have a single headlight and nothing else.  It could possibly have a chuff synch, but these things came with basically no documentation.  I'd have to disassemble the entire engine to be sure, and I really don't want to get into that.

Good info on the wiring Steve.  The question is which wire for track power is which, and which wires are for the light.  Also need to know if BLI steamers use LEDs or incandescent....need to know before I apply power and burn up a LED because of no resistor.

Thanks,

Kevin

Track Power Wires

Hi Kevin--The track power wires pick up through the wheels from the track on the same side--they do not cross.

Does the engine have smoke? If no smoke, then no chuff sync. Without smoke the chuff is calculated in the decoder.

If you can't tell if it has smoke, there is a smoke on/off slide switch under one of the legs of the firebox.

My BLI familiarity is only with PRR engines and a friends USRA. Basic wiring is the same, and as I described.

I don't know why your engine/tender connector has 7 wires. On PRR engines it is 6 or 8; 8 with smoke.

Steve Hoxie

Pensacola FL

Which horse's mouth?

Kevin, 

Not too many months ago BLI changed their contact e-mails. They warned that sending to the old addresses could generate no replies.

This is the current address which gave me quick results. Is it what you're using?

  techsupport@broadway-limited.com

drJolS

Email

I just sent another email to them at the address you provided.  Hopefully they get back to me.

There doesn't appear to be smoke in this unit, which I guess means no chuff synch...so I'm at a loss for what the 7th wire is.  I don't see any other lights besides the headlight (USRA Light Pacific).  I'll let you know what BLI says.

Are the bulbs in BLI incandescent or LED?

-Kevin

Headlights

Hi Kevin-Could be either. Recent models are LED. Sorry, forgot to include this in my last post.

You should be able to remove the smokebox front, then unplug the connector. The bulb/led can be removed with its leads. Carefully.

Steve Hoxie

Pensacola FL

Plug on the Hudson

Here's a diagram I made some time ago. Smoke unit or not, BLI had a "chuff sensor" reed switch for many of their steam locomotives.

Good Luck,

Ed

@Ed

That diagram may be just what I'm looking for.  I will wire everything up tonight/tomorrow and test it out to confirm.  Thanks!

-Kevin

Results

Alright, got the first one wired up and it works for the most part.  The two outer wires are indeed pickup wires, and they line up with the wheels on that side (have to make sure you get the correct wires from the tender to match up or you'll short).

The next two in are the motor wires, but on these locomotives the wires were opposite of your diagram Ed.  Wired as written above sent the loco backwards.  Not a big deal because it takes two seconds to switch the direction settings on the decoder.  All fixed.

The light is the issue though.  I wired it as it showed above with no luck.  I popped off the boiler cap and confirmed it was a LED, so I used a 1K ohm resistor on the white wire to prevent a blowout.  The light doesn't turn on, which makes me think perhaps the wires are routed differently for light as they were for the motor.  That or the LED already has a resistor in there somewhere (didn't see any on the board the LED was mounted to).

I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to figure out which is which, but I'll give it some thought.

-Kevin

Kevin   I rewired up 2

Kevin

I rewired up 2 locomotives made by BLI. both were of the 2-8-2 wheel arrangement One was a paragon the other was blueline. I found that the tether between the locos were different with regards to their lighting arrangement. 

in the end I had to open up both boilers to trace how the lights were wired.

Trent