Has anyone had experience adding lights to Athearn ready to run passenger cars? How about power pickup. Don’t suggest EasyPeasy. I ain’t buying a lot of batteries.
I’ve basically given up on finding reliable interior lighting for passenger coaches. With track power your wheels and track must be kept immaculately clean or the lights will flicker. As you already stated, the Easy Peasy eats batteries, especially if you forget to turn them off. The so-called “constant lighting” circuits require rather large, conspicuous electrolytic capacitors.
I think the Athearn parts department sells interior lighting modifications for their passenger coaches consisting of replacement trucks with electrical pickup wipers.
How much light do you need for the inside of a coach? Wiring four or five LEDs and resistors in series to a AA battery holder isn’t brain surgery. You can even re-task the newer Christmas LED light strings for this sort of application.
Ray makes a good point, on the lighting. Some of what we think of as good light (to see the interiors) ould require our passengers to wear sunglasses. (Rapido: Your Transcona caboose falls into this one. Sorry guys) A few microLEDs would do wonders as the luggage rack lights over seats. Though the AA battery goes to the same issue as the EasyPeasy, just even more batteries.
Resistor sets may be clunky, but don’t forget yo have a clerastroy not doing anything…
This has been one of my greatest sources of frustration in the hobby. I do agree with the poster that mentioned about track having to be extremely clean and likewise the wheels. I have been told and read where the lights in the Spectrum heavy weight coaches if left on long enough will melt the roofs of the cars. Fortunately I have not tested this theory (YET!) I have spent countless hours trouble shooting command station short circuits to find out it was a lone IHC passenger car parked on a siding, hidden behind a building no less that too two of us nearly five hours to find. I have had 12 couches all lit and working perfectly make a full circuit of the layout go through a tunnel for a second pass though and dead short inside the tunnel for no rhyme or reason. So I have come to the conclusion which is, The little people on my trains choose to sleep at night and can’t be bothered with lights. In an effort to still look some what real I have kept the interior lighting down to only one or two cars in a train and those have been lit by entirely home made LED’s configurations with small watch batteries and a micro engineering ultra mini slide switch hidden inside one of the boxes mounted under the coaches. If you could still get your hands on that stuff they used to illuminate numbers on watches years a go I would just paint the insides of the roofs of the cars and be done with it…lol but then I would have to go out and keep buying batteries for my Geiger counter.
Thanks for the tip on the replacement trucks, with power pickups. I wasn’t aware Athearn sold them.
I was also considering LEDs, with rechargable ni cads in the baggage car, And connecting the cars together, with Miniatronics mini plugs. That would eliminate flicker. And real passenger cars have a bunch of cables and hoses connecting them together. So it would not look unusual. Diaphrams on the cars would also hide the wires. I usually keep my passenger trains together, so wiring them together would not present a problem.
Coming from a guy who does not light any of his passenger cars, let me ask this naive question. Is there any practical way to string lights from car to car like a string of Christmas tree lights, feeding power from the engine decoder to prevent flickering lights?
Rich
Hi!
Lighting coaches easily and reliably can be a real job - but not impossible by any means.
As my ATSF & IC trains run only in the daytime, the passengers have no need for lights, and sit behind tinted windows enjoying the scenery.
Mobilman44
Also, Soundtraxx sells two-pin plgs for speakers, you could also use them t gang-plug the coaches.
I did the ultimate car lighting circuit once upon a time. I acquired a supercapacitor from All electronics. It was 0.47 FARADS and held enough juice to keep the lights on for 20 seconds after track power was removed. It took a bit of electronicking to make things work. First was a full wave bridge rectifier to give the electronics a dependable plus and minus even after track polarity was reversed. The supercaps are electrically tender and cannot withstand more than 5 volts. I used a three terminal 5 volt regulator to protect the supercap from 12 volt trck power. Then the 1.5 volt bulbs needed a simple regulator (transistor plus three diodes) to keep the bulbs happy againt the 5 volt supercap. All this fit inside an HO caboose.
I hooked this baby to the end of a friend’s coal drag to show off the lighting. Unfortunately the coal drag could no long make the hill, due to the frictional drag of the wheel wipers on the illuminated caboose. Lesson learned, alway use axle wipers.
Next lighting project was a whole trains worth of IHC streamlined passenger cars. I tried a Type N 1.5 volt battery, a micro slide switch and a couple of 1.5 volt bulbs. Not good, the bulbs were not birght enough and the car didn’t show light in the windows unless the layout room was blacked out. More successful was to buy the Walther’s car light kits, a plastic assembly with a few bulbs and a regulator and wire it to track power. It still flickered a bit, but the regulator held the bulb brigthness steady and it was better than the battery powered car.
You too, LOL?
After buying a whole bunch of Walthers lighting kits for my Rio Grande “Prospector” and “Royal Gorge” trains, it dawned on me:
Hey, these trains are scheduled over the Yuba River Sub in the morning and the afternoon, for cryin’ out loud! [%-)]
Anyone need about 12 Walthers lighting kits? [:P]
Tom [:D]
I have eleven Rapido coaches. They look just awesome running around in the night. However running trains in the dark gets old real quick, so the battery issue isn’t an issue for me. I am still using the same ones after four years. Night time runs are for visitors.
Brent