The motherboard comes with a 21 pin dummy plug which I removed. I put a piece of Kapton tape on the motherboard to insulate the ESU v4 Select decoder (soon to be a v5) I was going to add to the engine.
In the second picture you can also see the speaker pads (S+-) on the right side of the picture and 3 of the 4 function pads on the left side. I added a speaker and the programmed decoder, replaced the shell and I was off and running!
On thing that is difficult to do is add ditch lights. The engine comes with 2 dummy ditch lights below the front platform (non-prototypical) which could be removed and replaced with LEDs but there is no room! The front stairs block almost all access to them. There are ditch light kits out there but you will have to take a look and see what you think. It would be possible to add fiber optic cable to function as the ditch lights and there are kits out there for this also.
Regardless, I am having a ball running my new locomotive and I believe you will also.
If you have an idea for a blog post here, let me know. If I can comment on it, I will or I'll see if someone else can and post it.
I forgot to mention this in the post. If y0u get one of these locomotives and it has a dead short right out of the box, remove the shell and adjust the dummy plug so that it doesn't contact the motherboard. There's no insulation between them. If they touch you will have a short. Ask me how I know. That's why I put a layer of Kapton tape there.
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