Well, in essence you are testing when a switch is open. Power is applied to one contact and appears on the other when it is closed, goes away when it is open.
Because solenoid has small resistance, the best is to disconnect wires, hook bulb to + and to one of the contacts and the other contact to ground.
Bulb lit - switch closed, bulb off, switch opened.
i think it may be a good practice to set switch to open right after CSS pushes rods on gear selection + slack in linkage. 1600 is said to be max in BBB, I would find it personally too much. The opening of the switch puts gearbox in "shift up ready" mode and you may want it to happen when you start pressing gas pedal while in gear, which means right after CSS pushed linkage + slack in linkage.