# Passenger Car Lighting



## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Since this topic comes up all the time, I thought it might be nice to revisit it briefly. Here's the RailKing Reading Crusader Observation Car that I upgraded to LED lighting and also added passengers. One of the issues of the observation car is getting decent lighting to the marker lamps and the rear tail lamp.

For the shell, I remove the socket and wiring for the rear bulb, and I slightly extended the wiring for the front bulb and added a connector. I added the matching connector onto my LED Lighting Regulator Module to make it easy to separate the roof from the car and not have it dangling on a wire. I added a sprinkling of passengers, including a few standing to add some additional interest.

Here's a quick shot of the finished product.









Here's the interior of the car before final assembly. You can see the pigtail from the old light socket with the connector attached.









This is the front detail of the roof interior, In the roof section, I stick the lighting module to the ceiling with double-sided foam tape, it's well above the sight line from the windows. I run the wires over to the LED strip that runs down the center of the car. You'll also notice I bend the tab on the regulator down so it doesn't show in the window.









Here's the rear detail of the observation car roof. This is how the markers and taillight are illuminated. I take two LED's and form the leads to suspend the LED at the correct position. They're glued to the roof once the associated wiring is connected. The taillight LED is simply glued directly to the taillight lens in the roof. Nice thing about CA adhesive, it dries clear. You can see the 470 ohm resistor in series with the three LED bulbs, that resistor is selected to provide the desired level of illumination of the lights. Since each segment of the LED strip has a 150 ohm series resistor and three LED's, these will consume about 1/2 the power of one of the three-LED segments. The color temperature of the three marker/taillight bulbs is selected to be the same as the LED strip, so any incident light from them just helps illuminate the rear of the car interior.









In total this car has 18 LED's, and it consumes a total of 25ma of track power. The side markers and taillight are now nicely lit as opposed to "just being there" as they were with the factory lighting.


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## Mark VerMurlen (Aug 15, 2015)

Thanks for posting this. Nice workmanship and a good example.

Mark


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I'm working on the dome car, it's an interesting problem, so I'll post a few pictures of that one when it's done.  I have an identical observation car to do yet, the Reading Crusader had two observation cars, one on each end. They did that so they didn't have to turn the whole train around, just swing the locomotive to the front and away they went.


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## bob from pdx (Mar 18, 2014)

Hi GRJ will follow you on this thread.. the thread is very good with pictures..the last 2 LINKS out of 6 work the first 4 don't on firefox brouser. just let u know GREAT JOB JOHN


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

bob from pdx said:


> Hi GRJ will follow you on this thread.. the thread is very good with pictures..the last 2 LINKS out of 6 work the first 4 don't on Firefox browser. just let u know GREAT JOB JOHN


Hmm. There are only four pictures in the first post, and they're all linked from this site and the same graphics format. I can't imagine why half of them wouldn't work.

Did you try viewing it with a different browser? FWIW, I use Firefox here, no problems.


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

Nice John

I'm totally ignorant of the 0 gauge track power and
digital controls of today. Is the track continuously
powered as in DCC? AC?

Don


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Well, for command operation, the track is powered all the time with around 18 volts AC. For conventional, it varies according to transformer setting. My lighting modules and my lighting for the cars is really targeted to command operation, for conventional you'd have to do something different for power, and using the 12V strips is probably somewhat problematic.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Each car presents a slightly different problem, here's the dome car lighting. Since it's a two-level car, you have to deal with multiple strips in order to light it. Since there's a passage way with no windows, I just dropped the lighting regulator into that passageway, job done. You can see the strips are offset going across the bottom of the dome seats, I centered them over the lit portion, I didn't bother to light the passageway that has no windows. The lighting for the dome portion is wired through two small holes at one end, you can see the wires spliced in on the right side of the dome.









Here's a shot of the completed car from the side all lit up.









The dome lighting presented a different challenge, there was no overhead beam to hide the lights, and they'd look pretty ugly just stuck to the glass. I fooled around with the idea of a track, but that didn't look good, so I went with Plan-B. I slipped a light strip beside each outside row of seats and did floor level lighting. The effect came out pretty nice, so I'm glad I didn't hack up the look by trying to run them overhead.


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

Its the links at the bottom of your post. For me the first 4 were broken but the last 2 did get to Hennings.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Oh, those!  Yep, they "updated" the store site, and broke my links. I'll have to fix them.


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

I like the dome lighting, but it makes wonder what was done in the real dome cars. How was it lit such that it didn't block the ability to see out? Or maybe you couldn't?


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I suspect the real dome cars had a support on the overhead where the lights were. Many models have a center section that isn't glass as well.

If you search Google Images for dome cars, I don't find any that don't have a center section of roof that isn't glass.

*Google Search of Dome Train Car Images*


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## mopac (Feb 24, 2011)

John, maybe I missed it. Did you use a bridge rectifier to change AC to DC for the LEDs.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I use my passenger car lighting module. It is a constant current regulator module that offers regulation, flicker-free operation, and DCS compatibility.

LED Lighting Regulator


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

Airplane style lighting. That's makes sense.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

Yep, I just got as close as I could.


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