a couple of simplistic questions

Forrest;

20 amps at 120VAC is 2400 Watts available. That takes a lot of trains to overload.

To be sure, Look at the bricks and total up the input wattage.

I suspect you are fine but that is the only way to be sure.

Putting the breakers back in circuit will not hurt anything but the direct lockons may pop first and prevent them from opening. It all depends on which one is set lower or faster.

If so they will probably open when the lockons reset.

Either way, no harm will be done by putting them in.

Sounds like you run some heavy amperage trains, have you considered replacing the light bulbs in passenger consists with LEDs?  That will curb the power draw significantly.

As Red used to say;

Take Care and God Bless

Forrest

I did a number of my own sets with good results. It is easier after you do a few and you can do a set in and evening. Dallee and others sell pre-made strips which are good but a bit pricey. However some of these cars are not that easy to get apart,and that is the most difficult part of the conversion usually for me. I think anyone who offered that service would have the problem of risking breakage,not only from doing the conversion but shipping and packing both ways,little parts tend to break off. And if he/she does not break it, UPS or the post office probably would. Then the shipping cost itself makes it costly,probably more than most customers would pay. I sure would not do someone else's for the above reasons and also the type of lighting intensity I like may not be to another person's preference..  DYI if you have the skills is the best way,unless you can find someone competent locally offering the service.

Eventually you will have to take the cars apart to replace light bulbs anyway. When this happens I would consider converting,since getting them apart is at least half the job.

Dale H

Once you do one or two passenger cars, you'll realize how easy it is to convert to LED lighting.  The major issues are mechanical in nature, taking the cars apart, deciding where to locate the couple of components, mounting the light strips, etc.

Ha!

i have 7 passenger trains of between 7 and 11 cars (not all running at the same time).

the railking cars i can get apart OK.  

the k-line cars are more difficult.  in fact the milwaukee full dome apparently can be taken apart only by trained professionals and i could not get the observation car apart.

the k-line california zephyr domes are very tricky.

i have not attempted any of the lionel cars, so i don't know how difficult they might be.

just not the thing i am good at.  

You need to take them one specific model at a time and post specific details here.  Someone doubtless has the cars, I have some K-Line and Lionel passenger cars.  We'll help you get them open.

You're a good guy, John.  

George

It so happens I'm doing some K-Line cars now, this will give you an idea of the procedure.

The components go over the vestibules on one end, and they're not visible when looking in the car.  I use some snappable headers for connections, they're small and with a little heat-shrink, they make great miniature connectors.

Thanks for that image John - the axial capacitor and single diode seem to make assembly less awkward.

I picked the component form to fit in the space, after the picture I hot-glued them in.  Sometimes I use radial lead capacitors if the placement is different.  The one LED that they span is well past the windows, so I wasn't worried about blocking it.  It so happened the strips exactly fit between the vestibule mounting screws with no room to spare.  I used the single diode after testing at 8 volts and having plenty if brightness, so the bridge is back in the parts box.  Since I plan on running command, 18 volts through the bridge give me lots of voltage to drop, that heats up that little CL2 a bit much.  The diode is a much better fit for the environment.

The entire car is lit with 20ma, and if anything it's almost too bright!  LED's really are the way to go to chop your power consumption way down.  These six cars will go from about 2.6 amps to around 160ma, or a reduction of well over 90% in power consumption!  The only reason for some of the extra power is the drumhead and markers are incandescent and I'm leaving them because they look better than the LED's I tried.