Lighting to IHC cars.

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’ve got a fleet of the PRR heavyweight IHC coaches. Does anyone have a suggestion about what lighting kit to use that would fit said car’s?

2

Here’s an option, but it’s a bit pricey:

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/475-100YCL01

There is a company that produces a generic LED lightboard setup that includes pickup shoes and is lower in price, but I forgot the name of it! [D)] Hopefully someone here will remember.

3

It was some years ago, there was a Walthers LED light bar for their passenger cars that fit into my IHC cars. The bar had the electronics to feed the LED’s a constant current and get the polarity right. As I remember it was kinda pricey. I replaced the plastic wheels with metal ones and made axle wipers out of some phospher bronze weatherstrip. Brass isn’t springy enough for wipers. Paint the inside of the car a light color to make the lights look brighter. Beware the glow-in-the-dark car. Around this time of year you can get wide shiny ribbon which works well on the ceilings, it reflects the light down and out the windows and keeps the roof from glowing.

If you don’t use the light bars, the simplest rig is 12volt lamps on a DC layout. Two is enough, more is better. Constant brightness can be obtained with 1.5 volt lamps, an electronic regulator, and a full wave rectifier to give the regulator a constant polarity. That ought to work on DC or DCC. I think lamps give a more realistic light than LEDs especially for heavyweight cars were the prototype used incandecent lamps. White LEDs look more like fluorescent lighting, which was used on streamliners.

Getting enough brightness is always a problem, as well as current draw. Four 12 volt lamps can draw 100 mA. A ten car train of such cars takes a full amp, which can be a bit much for a lot of power packs.

4

AntonioFP45 wrote the following post 22 hours ago:

Here’s an option, but it’s a bit pricey:

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/475-100YCL01

I have used these in a number of my passenger cars, and like the result. They also make one with blue-white LEDs that resemble the fluroescent lights used in lightweight and more modern cars. The light strip is in sections that can be snapped off to fit the light to smaller cars like Athearn BB and RTR models

This is a comparison of the light with yelloglo (right) and blue-white LEDs (left). The photo is overexposed because I was trying to show the color of the LEDs

5

The Rapido Easy-Peasy drop in kit?

6

alexstan wrote the following post 10 hours ago:
The Rapido Easy-Peasy drop in kit?

That would work as well. Never tried them, just need access to change the battery from time to time. Miniatronics works from track power, and has a capacitor that stores power so the lights will not fliker on-off when dirty track interrupts the connection. The capacitor will run the lights for 3 or 4 minutes when th power is off

7

GPaine,

So neat how interior lighting adds more depth to passenger rail modeling.

I hope you don’t mind this, but your lights are slightly on the bright side. For subway cars that intensity would be right, especially with the flourescent version. For dimming the intensity slightly, does the kit come with resistors? If so, where would it or they be installed?