I’m having major issues with the way Walthers passenger cars recieve their power for car lighting. The top mounted screws on the trucks are supposed to press against a pair of wide metal “spring” wipers. These always seem to have poor electrical contact causing intermittent lighting.
What’s the best way to correct this? I assume some sort of hard wiring is necessary. Just wondering how others have approached this problem.
I’m also considering using LED lighting strips such as those from Radlites.com in place of the Walthers lighting modules. Any comments on this as well…
One big issue with tghe screws is that the crosscut in the head for the screwdriver recess often has small burrs from amnafacturing them. Take a file a make a couple of swipes to solve that. Mine have been very reliable once that’s done. Roger’s suggestion to try a little bit of a turn is also a good one.
For some insights into how I used LED strip light segments, plus lots of pics, starting on the second page of this thread are many of my installs and tips: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/213765.aspx
What you need depends on whether you have DC or DCC power. You’ll have to check other threads for DC installs. In DCC, you need a bridge rectifier and I supply some parft numberes/suggestions. Adding a capacitor to prevent flickering is also covered. Even though they can be crazy bright, it’s best to tone them down considerably with resistors to be more realistic.
Yes, I’ve tried turning out the screws a little bit in the past but that didn’t work too well for me. I’ll try filing the screw heads. Maybe the combination of the two will do the trick.
(Highlight the link, right click, then select “open link” or words to that effect).
The circuit is designed for three LEDs but you could probably add a couple more. I didn’t design the circuit and I am no electrical expert, so perhaps someone with more knowledge could verify that one or two additional LEDs would be OK.
The circuit won’t cure your pick-up problem. It will only hide it. I would suggest that the best route would be to correct the connectivity issue and then add the keep alive circuit if you feel the need.
Dave
EDIT: Make sure you read the whole thread. There have been a couple of questions raised about the viability of the circuit as I showed it.
While your checking out and working on those truck, also check that the truck is not twisted. This problem was more prevalent on the 3 axle heavyweights, however it still can happen w/ 2 axle. The screws would at times be cocked and allow some twist. First I flip the truck over and sight the axle plane, set the truck on a known flat surface, glass/ mirror is best. I have backed off screws and overbent as screws are tightened checking as you work. Also the PU body tabs have been found to be distorted on many cars, flatening or lifting to allow them to be the same w/ the truck resting on them. Once I found one mashed and distorted so severly, I almost had to find a way to replace it. The contact tabs should allow the truck to sit parralel to the body.
I completely forgot about having to file the burs off the tops of the screw heads. Some probably didn’t need it but I did them all…belt & suspenders. Good catch, guys.
I also forgot to mention using resistors between the power take-offs and the LED strip. I added a lot of restance to tone down the brightness. I was looking for a warm glow. If I recall correctly I used about 4K. Yes, I did say a lot.
And I took the easy/lazy/cheap way and did not use a bridge rectifier. Mine run directly off the track power–NCE at about 14.1v. Yes, they turn on and off sixty times a second but that is much faster than my geezer eyes can detect. It may shorten the LED life a bit but I have had no problems in three years. That train probably runs less than an hour/month.
Heh, heh, 4K is nuttin.[8D] Some of mine run at 100K or more. Of course, this is when simulating old school passenger lighting circuits, which tend to be dimmer. You really can’t go wrong in adding resistance until the lights actually go out. I have the layout set up for night ops, so dim is in. Most factory lighting and aftermarket kits make things movie set bright inside the cars so that you can see that you dropped the big bucks for lighting even when all the room lights are on. I like it dim.
In fact, if you go far enough with resistance, the “LED” in many of these strips actually is a diffusser with three tiny SMD LEDs on it. When really dim, it looks like a light fixture with 3 bulbs in it.
Yeah, no bridge rectifier will work. Besides just doing without, there’s also the half wave circuit, which uses only two diodes instead of the four that the bridge rectifier does, but also gives what is effectively DC. But my power tends to stay on, so just better in my case to drop the $2 or less bridge rectifier into the circuit for DC power.
