Adding Light To MTH Class A Tender "Doghouse"

Knight,

That thing that resembles a 9v battery is not actually one.  Since that "battery" has a very special purpose it would not be good to tap into its circuitry.

Instead take a look at this diagram:

The easiest way, electrically, is to tap into the existing circuit for the headlight at the connector highlighted in yellow above.  The new doghouse light will go on and off with the headlight.  If I remember correctly though in a PS1 headlights are 3V (Edit: actually 1.5V, see comments from @GGG later in the thread, below).  So you'll need a low-voltage lamp for your doghouse and not a 12v lamp.

Before you do that though the electronics (driver) that supplies power to that connector will probably not handle two lamps connected to it without overheating/quitting.  You can therefore make it work by using an LED and appropriate resistor in the doghouse instead.  The driver should be able to handle its existing lamp and the new LED/Resistor together (electrically in parallel) with no issue.

For an "always on" solution try this:

You can probably use a 12v lamp here, see the two connection points highlighted in yellow, because it won't see full track power very often since this is a PS1 loco.

Thanks to @gunrunnerjohn for the above diagram, from this thread:

    ProtoSound 1 Steam Tender / Board Wiring Diagram (or pictures) | Knight007

The interesting thing is that it appears that you were involved with that one too!

Good Luck with it.

Mike

K.D.,

Follow this link for a detailed discussion:

    What is the purpose of the tender doghouse | WestinghouseEMDdemoguy

Mike

Light connectors are 1.5V bulbs so you could do that, or you could go with 18-24V bulb off track power depending on amount of light you want.  Or go with an LED and drive off the marker plug.  G

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Before you do that though the electronics (driver) that supplies power to that connector will probably not handle two lamps connected to it without overheating/quitting.

Actually, the 1.5V is developed by connecting the light across two diode drops, so adding another small 1.5V bulb should be fine.

Thanks for all the replies.  I was able to use the diagrams to wire a 24v rice bulb to the red and black tether wires and it worked just fine.  One thing I did notice is that my tether is developing a break somewhere and I intermittently get failure to move forward and a rapid chuffing sound.  Wiggling the tether seems to remedy the situation.  This was developing before I added the doghouse light.  Does anyone have a tether they'd be willing to sell and just slip into a first class business envelope?

It's very likely to be a broken solder joint on the locomotive tether connector.  The motor leads are on the outside pins and get a lot stress.  Many times just putting a spot of solder on those will solve these issues.

If you still need a 4-pin tether, send me an email to my profile email address and we'll fix you up.