Ground Lights

One development in the past few years has been model locomotives equipped with step lights and especially ground lights. This has been a feature I've wanted to see ever since I first went railfanning. A post on the Model Railroader forum explains what they are:

The lights above the truck under the cab are actually called ground lights. They were controlled by the same switch that controlled the gage lights on the engineer's control stand. The switch was labelled "ground & gage lights" They were of little use for locomotive inspections. They were useful when starting a train in the dark. They enabled the engineer to see the ground to tell when the train started to move.

Before radios became common they allowed the trainmen who had to pass lantern signals to the engineer know that the engineer could see their signals. If the trainman could see the ground light he knew that the engineer could see his lantern.

ScaleTrains has addeds ground lights to its HO releases over the past several years. Here's a Tier 4 GEVO:

Here's a UP GP9B:

Here's a Rapido UP high nose U25B:

Ground and step lights always illuminate on ScaleTrains units when you press F8 for startup. They're controlled with a sepatrate function key on Rapido units.