# Kato Passenger Cars And Kato LED Light Kits



## pmcgurin (Sep 7, 2010)

I don't know what kinds of experiences other modelers have had with Kato light kits for Kato passenger cars, but I have found getting these to work to be fairly difficult. You take off the shell, put two copper wiper strips in little slots and then put the LED module.in, hoping that the two tiny wires in the LED module will make contact with the wiper strips. Of course, the instructions are in Japanese, so my terminology might be inaccurate. This is all pretty chancy. Will the little wire contact the wiper strip, or will the wiper slide away and the little stiff wire on either side of the LED module push the wiper strip back? Some of these cars take an hour of fiddling and diddling. I have sometimes found that the best hope is to then run the passenger train at full speed for a while. Sometimes the train fairies will wave their wands and your cars will light. Worst of all are the Amtrak bilevel cars, where the second level sometimes will not stay in place, and super glue didn't take on this plastic. Well, I can grumble in four languages, and my wife doesn't understand three of them. Genesis P42 is circling at full speed now followed by three bilevel cars that have lit up. Two white and one yellow lit, from 11-212 kit, same kit of six modules. The older bulb type modules were almost as much fun. I think Kato should redesign these light modules for better connectivity. imagine if your mainframe computer flickered as these lights do, with a reboot from time to time.


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## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

pmcgurin said:


> I don't know what kinds of experiences other modelers have had with Kato light kits for Kato passenger cars, but I have found getting these to work to be fairly difficult. You take off the shell, put two copper wiper strips in little slots and then put the LED module.in, hoping that the two tiny wires in the LED module will make contact with the wiper strips. Of course, the instructions are in Japanese, so my terminology might be inaccurate. This is all pretty chancy. Will the little wire contact the wiper strip, or will the wiper slide away and the little stiff wire on either side of the LED module push the wiper strip back? Some of these cars take an hour of fiddling and diddling. I have sometimes found that the best hope is to then run the passenger train at full speed for a while. Sometimes the train fairies will wave their wands and your cars will light. Worst of all are the Amtrak bilevel cars, where the second level sometimes will not stay in place, and super glue didn't take on this plastic. Well, I can grumble in four languages, and my wife doesn't understand three of them. Genesis P42 is circling at full speed now followed by three bilevel cars that have lit up. Two white and one yellow lit, from 11-212 kit, same kit of six modules. The older bulb type modules were almost as much fun. I think Kato should redesign these light modules for better connectivity. imagine if your mainframe computer flickered as these lights do, with a reboot from time to time.


I have not done this, but I have seen several posts complaining about the degree of difficulty involved. Unusual for a Kato product, most of which are well designed.

Traction Fan


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## pmcgurin (Sep 7, 2010)

I have not found any other posts on the issue. I have thought about soldering the LED wires to the wipers and then putting the wiper strips into their slots and pushing the LED module into its slot. I was unsure whether the heat of the soldering would fry the LED or not. I also thought this might be a problem if I wanted to install a decoder for DCC. With over 50 of these passenger cars I have collected over the years, DCC is unlikely, though. All those decoders if you wanted the cars to light with DCC. 

Some of my installations work OK, and some flicker and fo on and off, almost as if passengers were turning lights on and off. I wonder if the clever Kato people had planned this. I wonder if there is some trick to installing these lights that eludes me. At any rate I like the lit Kato cars better than ones that don't light at all.


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## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

pmcgurin said:


> I have not found any other posts on the issue. I have thought about soldering the LED wires to the wipers and then putting the wiper strips into their slots and pushing the LED module into its slot. I was unsure whether the heat of the soldering would fry the LED or not. I also thought this might be a problem if I wanted to install a decoder for DCC. With over 50 of these passenger cars I have collected over the years, DCC is unlikely, though. All those decoders if you wanted the cars to light with DCC.
> 
> Some of my installations work OK, and some flicker and fo on and off, almost as if passengers were turning lights on and off. I wonder if the clever Kato people had planned this. I wonder if there is some trick to installing these lights that eludes me. At any rate I like the lit Kato cars better than ones that don't light at all.


pmcgurin;

You do need to be careful soldering wires directly to tiny surface mount LEDs. This I have done, many times, though not with Kato passenger car lighting kits. However, if your lighting kits come with wires already soldered to the LEDs, heat won't be an issue. An LED is not going to be damaged by soldering the other end of a wire several inches away from the LED. You can heat sink an LED by putting a small piece of a paper towel soaked in cold water over it. Unless you are soldering directly to the LED itself, that should not be necessary.

The flickering on and off sounds like an intermittent electrical connection. This may be due to dirt on the wheels, rails, or wiper contacts. Some poor connection in the things that Kato substitutes for normal wiring could also be the culprit. I think you are wise to wire the lights as directly to the wheel wiper contacts as possible, using actual wire, and soldered connections. Nothing beats soldered wire for a reliable connection.

As I said last time, I personally have not used the Kato Lighting kits. I don't know if they include a capacitor to prevent flickering. I have read that some modelers use capacitors for lighting as well as "keep alive" capacitors for locomotives. The principal is the same. The capacitor provides a small bit of power to keep things working when the power from the track is blocked by dirt or other very brief electrical losses.

good luck;

Traction Fan

An alternate way of powering passenger car lighting is with batteries in each car. These need to be as small as possible to fit inside a car, but output 3-4 volts to the LEDs. The three volt flat disc batteries are a possibility. You also need some means of turning the lights on & off. A tiny magnetic reed switch and magnet might work.


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## pmcgurin (Sep 7, 2010)

traction fan said:


> pmcgurin;
> 
> You do need to be careful soldering wires directly to tiny surface mount LEDs. This I have done, many times, though not with Kato passenger car lighting kits. However, if your lighting kits come with wires already soldered to the LEDs, heat won't be an issue. An LED is not going to be damaged by soldering the other end of a wire several inches away from the LED. You can heat sink an LED by putting a small piece of a paper towel soaked in cold water over it. Unless you are soldering directly to the LED itself, that should not be necessary.
> 
> ...


Thanks for this detailed reply. I am going to consider soldering the connections on some of these passenger trains I will keep, leaving some I don't plan to keep alone, because someone might want to put DCC decoders in them, and I have no idea of how decoders are installed in cars like these. I think I have in stalled most of the light kits I want to install, but I still have to upgrade one or two sets from incandescent bulb lights to LED lights. I might solder those, possibly using wires between wipers and LED modules. I did pull one set of BN passenger cars out of a tub that I had put the LEDs in when they first came on the market and amazingly they work perfectly. I still have some of these I will have to tinker with.


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## pmcgurin (Sep 7, 2010)

I have continued installing LED light kits into Kato passenger cars. I have almost all with LED lighting and only a couple still with incandescent lighting. I have found that running each passenger train at moderate speed, about 30% throttle, for two to three hours continuously makes the LEDs light more constantly and with less flicker. I have no idea why this is so. 

Since the Kato LEDs are running better I have given up on the idea of soldering the light kit wires to the wiper pick ups. I have found a way to light ConCor cars. Replacing the wheels with metal wheels, then replacing the plastic pin ConCor uses to attach the truck to the car with the screw from an Atlas passenger and using Atlas's steel pickup wiping the wheel axles, removing the car top to access the interior and usin g the round nut from an Atlas car to hold the screw from the truck, I wrapped the wires from an LED strip to the screws Atlas used to hold their light bar to the round nut, and screwed these Atlas screws into the top of the round nuts. Basically putting Atlas's old lighting method into a ConCor car. The Atlas cars are often pretty enough that you could just substitute the LED strip for the light bar in an Atlas car. I put a LED strip in a ConCar SP Daylight observation, so now it has lighting. I probably have enough old Atlas cars to find parts to do a few more ConCor cars like this.


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## Taylor622 (Jan 31, 2013)

I just installed the Kato 11-212 lighting kit on 6 Kato passenger cars. Watch all the YouTube videos on this exact topic. Kato has a video but some others are more detailed. Adding the orange filter to make the LED look like incandescent light was my choice. That added a considerable amount of fiddling and careful manipulation of delicate components. A lighted magnifier and a sprue cutter were very helpful. I did not solder any connections and the cars are running with no flicker. My grandson got a Kato Santa Fe SuperChief starter set last Christmas and I couldn’t leave well enough alone. It’s now an F7 ABA 9 car consist with lighted cars circling the Christmas tree.


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## pmcgurin (Sep 7, 2010)

I have found that the last few 6-led kits I bought were brighter than ones bought around January of '22. These seem to have little or no flicker. I like the bright white, and I think it looks much like pictures of passenger cars, including NYC, that are in a book I have. Bright lights circling in the dim basement light, overheads turned off. I guess I am easily amused.

I have a few sets of Kato passenger cars, and I have observed that the newer ones light better than the earlier ones, and the newer types hold the LED lights better than early Kato cars. With some earlier UP coaches I had to tape LEDs in place, which worked out well.


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