I’ve got some time between now and new years, and I’m looking to light up some Athearn streamlined passenger cars. I’ll be running them on DCC, and have the LED’s and rectifiers ready to go. I’ve also saved some space for capacitors, so I should be able to keep the lights on for about 5 seconds without power.
But I’m not sure the best way to go about getting the power from the track. Would a sheet of very thin brass that I cut into strips work for pickup? And just drill a small hole into the strip to attach it to the screw that keeps the truck on? In essense, I’d be re-creating the Athearn lighting kit that they used to sell.
Is there a better way of doing this, or a more tried and true way?
I tend to favor using a light spring wire contact, usually .010" Tichy phospor-bronze wire. Here are a few pics of the pickups I made for my Walthers troop sleepers.
If the trucks are plastic, this works well. The next pic shows the wiper assembled, but not soldered. That’s a small piece of PCB tie material in the middle. If used properly, these can also provide insulation on metal cars.
Once things are soldered, then you can cut the asssembled contact off the end of the piece of PCB. Before that, it makes a handy handle as you assemble.
I had a few Athearn passenger cars that came with a sintered metal wheel on one side and a plastic wheel on the other so you could mount these to pick up current from bronze wipers or the method Mike shows. Athearn fed the current through the bolster screw to the weights where a single bulb was stuck through one of the metal weights… not very sophisticated.
There are wheelsets out there that have one wheel insulated so that the axle will let you collect power from rail A on one truck and rail B on the other.
Sometimes Walthers has their Proto passenger trucks on sale. These are made to contact a metal strip on either side of the center sill of the [Walthers] car but you can tin a fine wire and place it under the contact screw of the truck bolster and the advantage here is you will collect current from all wheels on each truck and you won’t have the drag of any wipers.
Walthers trucks are hit-or-miss as far as availability but it might be an option for you down the road.
I did 4 of the Athearn streamliners last year for DC. What I found out was the stock Athearn pick up worked very with the cap@1000 mfd/bridge/led setup.
The cap stores up plenty of voltage to carry the cars over the switches with out blinking the LEDs.
If you replace the wheelsets w/ insulated wheel w/ brass axle (like a JB), you have more options to place the wiper on the axle. JB lighting kits used a bronze “H” and rubbed both axles @ 2 spots for each axle, (4 contact areas) the hole in the center of the “H” is for the truck screw. longer screws allowed the wiring PU inside the floor. Used a few of them for caboose lighting. drwayne also has a unique method, maybe he will chip in.
