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F7 Dim Lights
If you are approaching a station or an oncoming train you can turn off the ditch lights
and dim the headlights automatically by pressing F7. You don’t want to blind anyone.
I’m getting a sense of déjà vu. I’m getting a sense of déjà vu.
F9 Front Class Lights
F10 Rear Class Lights
They do exactly what they say – these function buttons turn on the class lights. GMD-1
locomotives only use white class lights. The rebuilt GMD-1 is not often called upon to
lead two sections of The Canadian, so the greens aren’t needed. And the GMD-1s aren’t
pushing GO trains, so the red lights aren’t needed. If you want to order more GMD-1s
and put them into GO or AMT service pushing commuter trains, just shmear the class
lights with a red marker.
F11 Fast Doppler Horn
OK – GMD-1 locomotives never go this fast. But it’s a neat recording. If your engineer
is really in a hurry and is hauling nothing but a van or maybe one boxcar behind his
three-unit consist, play this Doppler recording. Then get out of the way.
F12 Switching Mode
If you press F12, the headlight and rear light will both be on dim. This is appropriate
for switching operations. On the real GMD-1, it actually is not possible to have both
the headlight and rear light on at full strength. Press F12 again to turn off the switching
mode lighting.
F14 Turn Off Number Boards
The number boards are lit by default, a big improvement over our last GMD-1. It was
annoying when you’d lose power because of a short somewhere else on the layout and
then you had to go through the tedious task of turning your number boards back on. If
you really want them off, press F14. We suggest you be a radical and just leave them
on.
F15 Brake
In 13 years of making model trains we have met one person who uses the brake feature
on our locomotives. So we’ve shoved this to a higher function button. If you are that one
person, you can remap this feature onto a lower function button by following the instruc-
tions in the full ESU Select Decoder manual, which can be downloaded from the GMD-1
page of the Support section of the Rapido web site.
Functions F16-F19
These are not used. Don’t press them. Your GMD-1 may explode.
F20 and F21 Sarco Valve (Spitter)
These functions turn on or off the Sarco Valve. On the real GMD-1, it’s always going. But
you often can’t hear it from a distance. In contrast, if you are close to the engine you can
hear the Sarco valve pretty prominently. We feel that on many sound-equipped engines,
