# CAT Locomotive Lighting (part 2)



## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Well, I bagged the old scheme, tossed the board, and started over. Here's the new board. I have the usual markers and headlights forward and back, but I added a wrinkle on the remaining lighting. The other output from the TMCC electronics is the smoke output, and this locomotive has no smoke unit, so it's my remaining light control output.

I have cab lights, a MARS light, and some top markers/classification lights. I installed counter that allows me to light them in any combination by sequencing through the options. The sequencing is done by turning the smoke output on and off, each time it steps the counter. The counter is continuously powered from track power, so it remains at the previous count when the power is turned off. The 220uF cap hopefully holds up the power through brief track interruptions. 

The shell lighting is all wired to the one side of the board at the bottom and the board is stuck to the side of the shell. The 5 pin plug connects the board to the locomotive outputs and voltage.

Just thought someone might enjoy seeing how crazy you can get trying to get cool lighting working. 






















*Here's the final schematic to do the deed.*


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## Xnats (Dec 5, 2010)

Ok that is pretty cool John. Are you adding this to a stock/ basic engine with only a working headlight? Do you need to add the leds to the board or does this go onto a harness?


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I'm putting it into an MTH locomotive that has been converted (not by me this time) to TMCC with cruise control. The TMCC control board has light three outputs, forward, reverse, and smoke (or marker). The LED's have already been installed in the shell, the wires will solder to the board, then the board will be mounted on the side of the shell. The 5 pin connector goes to the electronics on the frame. The LED's are mounted all over the place, this thing will look like a Christmas tree when all lit up!


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## Xnats (Dec 5, 2010)

Ok thanks John. You'll have to take a pic when you get it all done  :thumbsup:


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

It's finally soup! Here's the pictures of the shell interior with the lights installed. The cab piece with the engineer figures is not in for these. The first three are the lighting and the board installation, the last one is the whole shell to gain perspective.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Here's the switchable lighting. Also note the green markers, they turn red for reverse. You can have any combination of the MARS light (top headlight), the classification lights (on the top), and the cab interior lights. I missed a couple of the combinations, but you get the idea.


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## Xnats (Dec 5, 2010)

Just to cool John. That was a pretty impressive job, must have been fun. Then again, you do nice work, your lighted passenger car came out fantastic, with the light strip. Did you just used hot glue to hold everything? I bet the grandkids love it with all the lights :thumbsup:


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

Ohh ...

When I saw your first posts yesterday with the circuit board and the circuit diagram, my eyes glazed over ... I had no idea what you were talking about.

But ... 

Eureka! Now I see! Excellent custom lighting work!

TJ


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Thanks guys. Yep, it's all hot glue, one of the nice things about O-scale shells is they're pretty thick and hot glue doesn't bother them a bit. 

My grandson liked all the lights, he fooled with them for some time.


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## gandy dancer#1 (Jan 21, 2012)

all i got to say is WOW & WOW where can i get me on of those cat locos in HO??


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## santafe158 (Jul 14, 2010)

Wow, I have a hard time installing an ERR kit. Looks like you made your own circuit board. I wouldn't even know where to start. Looks good.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

Nothing but a Masterpiece!:thumbsup:

It's the first time I have seen that counter used.
I recognized everthing else.
Tiny Cad to the rescue!


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

And he said, "Let there be light" and there was light.:thumbsup:

Sweet John,:thumbsup:

May I ask what is the cost of all the electric gizmos to make it light?


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Thanks guys.  The electronics all ends up being a few bucks, none of it is expensive. The circuit board is a proto-board, I have some of them left over from when I did real projects for pay. Sometimes I'd have a tech assemble things, but the simpler stuff I'd just do myself, it was faster. I wear out the wires to Digikey and Mouser, you can't beat them for prices on stuff.

I did find a couple of things I'll change on the next go, the counter is a bit sensitive to brief interruptions in track power. I may pull it out and put in larger caps for the filter and slow down the clock response a bit to give it more noise immunity. It worked great on the bench, I thought the time constant for the clock was sufficient to ride over the noise, obviously I was wrong. 

I actually have a commercial schematic capture program, but I like TinyCAD for simple work, it's actually very capable.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Nice wiring work, however class lights or markers aren't usually that far down on the front of the engine.

The F40PH is a modern engine, and the lights you lit up as green in the photo are probably supposed to be the ditch light housings.

The class lights / markers on this model are the round details up by the number boards.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I realize that, I just decided to get "creative".  It is a toy after all.  I toyed with the idea of putting the ditch lights in and then drilling out for marker lights as well. This was an experiment to see how I could control the other lighting with limited outputs from the TMCC board. I learned some lessons that I'll apply to a future project.


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