I would like to add interior lighting to a set of Athearn Heavyweight passenger cars. I am running a DC layout with blocks. Is there a way to do this at a reasonable cost? Many of the light kits I have seen are $25 + each.
Thank you
Brian
I installed Rapido’s Easy Peasy lights in my Athearn heavyweights and they work great. You need the short versions as the regular ones are too long.
The cost was only about $10.
The downside is replacing batteries but that is easy too and quite frankly I have only done it once in 5 years or so.
CN Charlie
I recommend track powered lights. I did a battery lamp job once, and it was never bright enough. Make axle wipers to pick up the juice. Don’t do wheel wipers, they have too much friction drag. Use incendescent lamps, they light just fine on AC, DC, and either polarity. Paint the inside of the car a light color, this makes the light brighter. And, it prevents the entire car from glowing in the dark because the plastic is translucent. Put the lights on the ceiling, sticky tape works. Secure the wiring out of sight with electrical tape. You want at least two bulbs, but four is better. For DC, you want a 12-16 volt bulb. For DCC I thing you want a higher voltage. I’m not running DCC, so I am not sure about the voltage. Take an ordinary AC voltmeter (multimeter) and measure it.
Brian,
If you’re in DCC, my approach is a little different but costs well under $25 a car. I use 3-LED segments of LED strip lights that Radio Shack sells (276-0329). These require a bridge rectifier to convert track power to DC. Depending on how much resistance you use, you can get any effect from gas lamps to close to daylight intensity. There’s more info here on carlighting, with a circuit diagram about one-third the way down the page: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/213765.aspx?page=2
I order the bridge recitifiers and capacitors in bulk from All-Electronics, although RS also has them available.
The lights stay on all the time, but they draw very little power so most DCC systems have no problem powering them. You could obviously add a function-only decoder if you want to turn them on or off.
Mike or others, have you done a magnetic reed switch based installation to turn on/off?
I would also recommend using LEDs for DCC. LEDs use minimal power, which is an important consideration in DCC.
The difficult part is getting power from the track. I bought a few Walthers lighting kits for my Rivarossi coaches. They came with replacement trucks with metal sideframes to bring the power in, but the connection from the trucks to the cars is a screw rubbing on a plate, hardly robust at all. Once of these days, I’ll replace that with a wire. These worked very well for a year or so, but now I’m lucky if the lights flicker on for a few seconds at a time.
These were a closeout item, and only cost a few dollars each. They were specifically for these cars, which Rivarossi had stopped producing, so I lucked out.
Another thing to consider: For some passenger cars, disassembly and reassembly are not trivial. This was certainly true of my Rivarossis. So, when I opened them up to add the lighting, I also detailed the interior. The cars already had coach seats, but they were just an unpainted plastic insert. I painted them, including silver armrests, and added a few seated figures in each car. This is a good use for bulk-packs of unpainted figures, as my limited skills at figure-painting are somewhat hidden by being inside the car and only visible through the windows.
You could do that, but I don’t, just leave them on all the time. I have my light levels set by resistor so that they work well with my night lighting scheme (also described in the link I cited earlier.)
For wipers, I fabricate my own, depending on the truck design, using Tichy .010 phosporbronze wire. Like Mr. B, I usually set them up as axle wipers, but the small size of the wire limits drag so could also work as a wiper on the back of the wheel.
I’ve use a reed switch with a 3v battery and 1.5 volt bulbs. It works OK, but I’ve also used a small toggle switch under the car - a slide switch might work too. If you get it in the right place, you can’t see it when the cars on the track.
I recall reading about someone who had all his passenger cars set up with batteries and reed switches, with the switches just on say the right side of the car. He had magnets set up so that as a train left staging and entered the layout, a magnet turned the lights on, and when the trains had run around the layout, reversed direction, and came back to staging, a magnet on the other side of the track turned the lights off.
I forgot to mention that I am running a DC layout with blocks.
Thanks
Brian
I run DCC, but I have a number of long sidings with on-off switches for power. That’s where I keep trains not in service, like my passenger trains when I’m not running them. Mine are track-powered, so the lights are always on when running, but I can park them and shut the whole train down with one toggle.
OK, my methods won’t work, as they depend on DCC power.
I have a bunch of Rapido coaches that have the batteries and a magnetic wande for the switch. I bought an old beat up signal bridge at a train show for $.50 and mounted the magnet hanging down from that. I had it on a secondary track and I would run the train through that track to turn the lights on or off. It worked quite well. I suggested Rapido market a signal bridge as an option for their easy peasy lighting but I guess they didn’t like the idea as I have still not seen it on the market.[(-D]