I figured I’d share this quick project of mine, adding lights inside a Walthers Santa Fe Pleasure Dome car.
I like adding lights to all my cars, but the lighting boards for purchase are all too expensive(and too bright) for my large fleet of passenger cars, so I always make my own!
The biggest challenge with this project is having lights on both the upper deck and the lower deck of the car. Walthers’ lighting kit for this car only lights up the lower deck, which is disappointing.
A second challenge is to have wires going up to the dome, without being seen.
First I drew a very crude diagram of what my plan of attack was…
As you can see, I divided up the light strip to 4 sections, and found ways to hide the wires inside the car. The 4 sections are: front end, back end, lower deck, and upper deck. Front end denotated by where Walthers supplies the ground pickup(left side).
Im using 3528 LED 12v strips - warm white.
Here’s a pic of the light strips laid out on the car:
Note that the middle tan piece is the interior for the dome car, upsidedown. I intentionally had the light strip mounted on the rear of the lower deck, because it was better concealed on that side, as there’s a walkway there, with walls, and the windows on that side are lower.
Now time to begin the wiring process!
This is the lower deck LEDs mounted and wired. Note the plug, which connects the lower deck lights to the rear lights. This allows the roof to be removed for future maintenance (adding figures and paint).
Rear LEDs mounted and wired. Again, note the plug.
