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8 Responses to Interior Lighting For Model Trains
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it seems that R means right track pickup; L means left tgrack pickup. good luck
The wagon must have metal wheels (available if necessary as spare parts) and pick-up gear (easy to invent if you are clever with bits of wire) fitted to the trucks (bogies in UK).
Some train model (and some accessory) manufacturers make lighting kits, even for specific passenger cars.
DCC rails have a constant (about) 12V AC on them, so a rectifier bridge (or at least 1 diode) and a resistor will be needed for LEDs.
Long lengths of 12V DC LED strips are available cheaply from electronics or LED suppliers, which can be cut to size (in sections of 3 LEDs). You can easily moderate the brightness with an extra resistor. Try searching online or on Ebay.
Check out train modelling magazines and sites for projects.
I have not put lighting in my coaches yet but plan to on some of them. LED is the way to go. There are add on kits available just the LED with the resistor there is a polarity and if the power is reversed say by having the car on the other direction then the LED will not light. There are warm lighting and cool bright lighting
A project I am working on is the green and yellow lights on the side of the Superliner coaches next to the doors. When a door is open the lights on all down the cars will turn yellow but to do that I need power from the engine so when I begin to move they will be green and when it is parked they will be yellow like at a station. My power I plan to feed through the coaches using magnetic cables to each car and the engine so they can be easily removed from the consist. Like the F-7 Mars headlight comes on when the throttle is advanced then so will these lights turn green.
Coach lighting will flicker if there are dirty wheels and axles on the cars but will do well when they are clean. LED is the way to go Lot less headaces. My project is still in the planning process but very workable. from Newman
Hi Newman, have you considered a system using magnets under the track at stations, with reed switches (or Hall sensors) mounted under the cars to turn the lights on when they reach the platform ?
As there would be only a very minimal current drain in passenger car lighting, this might be suitable for use with quite small rechargeable batteries.
no leds is the way to go if it is dcc it will lite for or back
. dcc is ac currant not dc use a led and a 1000 ohm resistor . if you use it in dc just mount two leds and reverse the leads on one and one will lit in for the other in rev.
You could put a bridge rectifier (or make a diode bridge) between pickups and lights. Make the AC input connection to the pickups, DC out polarity set for the LED illumination.
That way the polarity of supply to your LED illumination is always correct.
You could also add a “keep alive” capacitor across the feed to the LEDs to prevent unwanted flicker. After the rectifier bridge the polarity will always be the same so no problems with reverse voltage on the capacitor.
Good Luck, Bernard
I’ve found out that dcc runs at 16 volts and with n scale regular not led lighting the Kati bulbs get to hot as there rated for 12 volts and will melt the bodied Sofie dcc I would recommend LEDs that operate at 16 volts
I had looked around for a couple of years now for LEDs that are made for HO passenger cars. After doing my research I did purchase 5 light boards for my Fox Valley Hiawatha passenger cars from Mr. Ken Harstine’s company Voltscooter and here is the link voltscooter.com
When I originally purchased these my HO layout was still DC powered and they worked great. Now I am converting to DCC and they work equally as well with this system. The “keep alive” capacitors are already built in and the lighting brightness is adjustable and this is a great feature. Ken also sends great instructions for the installation. Last, I also purchased these as I could not find anything that was a reasonable price for the same features ($20 each). Ken makes these for HO and N gauge layouts. The N gauge light boards work great for a HO caboose. I hope this helps.