John, check on back in the north country. Not too bad up here, full on spring. Snow was thankfully long gone by the time we arrived.
I am using good old 63/37 rosin core solder, which has always worked very well for me. Not sure what would be any better? And I have only been soldering stuff for close on to 60 years or so.
Maybe a quick dab with TixFlux just before soldering might help, I may give that a try.
Rod
Here is a few pix of the first "finished" cars so far, taken in bright LED room lighting. I normally don't operate with lighting this bright; more of a "dusk" type lighting. If these turn out to be too bright, I will have to open them up and turn them down a little. We shall see.
Rod
Rod, those cars look great.
I have eight PCB's (third layout design) populated with components, tested, ready to go but who knows when I will get around to installing them. I still have the PE disappearing hobo car to convert, concerned about light leakage around the movable hobo. Was planning to convert my Lionel Lines Irvington cars next, but after seeing your cars above, maybe I need to do a non-silhouette set of cars instead.
GregM, I hear you, and thanks for the comments. I think cars with so called "detailed interiors" make the most sense, I don't think I'll bother with silhouette cars, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that. Time will tell. After the first car I think I'm down to under an hour per car, at least for standard cars. Definitely a dome car takes longer, as does an observation. The worst one was the vista dome car because I had to cut out the entire center section of the clear plastic dome window insert, to make space for the led strip to mount up against the underside of the top. I did this quickly with a dremel cutoff wheel, then it took forever to file all the rough edges down. But in the end it worked well.
A few more pix:
I did a set of IC silhouette cars and they looked great compared to the two bulbs that they came with. I have since only collected detailed interior cars and sold all the silhouette car sets. I have yet to do these cars which have incandescent stream lighting and really look pretty good without LEDs. But it would be nice to have constant power.
Rod Stewart posted:After the first car I think I'm down to under an hour per car, at least for standard cars. Definitely a dome car takes longer, as does an observation. The worst one was the vista dome car because I had to cut out the entire center section of the clear plastic dome window insert, to make space for the led strip to mount up against the underside of the top. I did this quickly with a dremel cutoff wheel, then it took forever to file all the rough edges down. But in the end it worked well.
We're going to have to get you to step up your game. 
I can whack out an MTH premier car in about 15 minutes, it takes me longer to seat all the passengers that it does to wire the LED lighting. The MTH RailKing and Lionel cars actually take me longer, usually you have to deal with some extra wiring issues. Here's a set I did recently for the RK MTH Crusader.
You'll see the dome car and observation cars take some special handling as you indicated. I didn't hack the top, I went with seat level lighting in the dome car.
All my small wiring is #30 wirewrap wire, works great and is easy to hide and route where you need it.
John, I am hoping I will be able to speed it up a bit after I get a few more under my belt (passenger cars that is! )
First impressions running though; great! No flickering and plenty of light. My passengers can now see what they are doing. They might be a little too bright, so I may crank them down a bit someday. And I need to add the marker light leds to the observation car, thanks for those ideas in the thread you pointed to John. I am also pleased to report that with the offshore parts I ordered after the first batch, and my bulk board order from AllPCB, my cost per board is now down to $1.03 all in. Well not including my time of course. 
My wiring from the module to the led strips is very light, about 30 AWG I believe. I ordered a bunch of micro JST 2 pin male/female connectors referenced earlier in this topic; about 10 cents a pair. They are perfect. So far I have been able to adapt the wiring already in the car to supply power from the rollers to the board input, after clipping off the unneeded light wires. So that's kind of handy. Works just fine. All in all it has been a good experiment so far.
Rod
Here is a front/back pic of the bulk boards: The pads are pre-tinned; yahoo!
My passengers were getting sunburn, so I had to reduce the intensity a bit. 
Mine are running a high risk of contracting skin cancer. Don't need any class action suit!
Rod
any pics and diagrams as to where exactly the PPTC goes and how it is wired???
What's a PPTC? 
Seriously, the PTC is wired between the two rollers on the car. The purpose is simply to protect the wiring in case the car derails and one roller lands on an outside rail.
gunrunnerjohn posted:What's a PPTC?
Seriously, the PTC is wired between the two rollers on the car. The purpose is simply to protect the wiring in case the car derails and one roller lands on an outside rail.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/10PCS...e-Fuse-/232141302070
10PCS RXEF025 XF025 72V 0.25A 250MA PPTC Resettable Fuse
That this thread is revived today is a little spooky. This morning I dug out the PRR Baby Madison passenger cars I had started adding passengers to and converting to LED lighting last year. The observation car was the only car I had finished by the time the weather had become warm enough to start fishing, so the rest were packed away for another day. Well another day finally came, lol.
anyone put the ptc on an osh board. or is that not doable?
TheDude23112 posted:anyone put the ptc on an osh board. or is that not doable?
Yes. I have done that. I posted the schematic for it earlier in this thread. I will look for pictures of the completed circuit board. I may not have taken any.
TheDude23112 posted:anyone put the ptc on an osh board. or is that not doable?
In order to have the PTC do something useful, you'd have to run each of the rollers separately to the PCB. The PTC goes between the rollers to protect the wiring in the case of a derailment.
Turns out I didn't have any pictures of the PCB with the PTC on the board. I am working (very slowly, I will admit) on upgrading some cars so I just took the pictures below, they are straight from the camera, no editing.
Bare board - Component side.
Bare Board - Solder Side (CR1 & CR2 are the center roller connections)
Components installed - view one
Components installed - View two
Board being installed
Double sided tape - board hopefully will stick to roof out of sight
You went deluxe with screw terminals. I figured my installations would be permanent, so I just solder to the board. I do use connectors between any removable layer of the car so I can take them apart for maintenance and adding passengers.
Greg, looks great. Do you have the OSH file and BOM?
Here is a link to the board on OSH Park.
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/Ah9bQ5RM
Thanks Greg...
I'm wondering what LED strips people are using and what color / temperature LEDs. Where is a good place to buy LED strips. I also may want to use board connectors in some projects. Does anybody have the part numbers for the 2 pin board connector and the male end for it. I have looked but there are so many out there, I don't want to guess at which ones work.
Thanks in advance.
What myself and others tend to use for passenger car lighting is strip leds size 3528 with 3 leds per 2" length. Warm white seems to produce the most realistic lighting. They are commonly available in 5m or 10m reels in 12vdc voltage range. AliExpress or ebay are good sources. Domestically Amazon has them also.
For connectors I have found JST-PH 1.25 work quite well. They are available on ebay in lots of 20 each male and female, for under $2. I buy about 4 or 5 lots at a time, usually with all shipped for the same cost as 1 lot would be. The header pin pitch is 0.1" on the board so you can also use any header you like including JST XH or JST EH, or Dupont pin headers, as well as others. What I do is solder the wires of the small 1.25 headers above directly to the board, then the mating end gets soldered to end of the led strip. This way the strip can be easily disconnected for car maintenance anytime. For the ac power supply side I just cut off the wires that supply the original lighting and solder them directly to the board.
16" cars can usually accomodate a strip 14" long, so 7 sections, 21 leds total. 18" cars use a 16" strip 24 leds, and 21" cars use an 18" strip 27 leds.
hope that helps,
Rod
Here’s a pic of the type/size connectors Rod is discussing. Note: in the pic of the installation, that ugly blob of hot glue can be replaced with some double sided tape. Even tho it will never show when the car is reassembled.
Figured I would ask in an older created topic about passenger cars.
Please correct me if I should not be doing this as I have several times because I would hate to create a new topic for a simple question, but I do not want to hijack a current topic thats fairly active at the moment (which this does not seem to be). My question is...
I am looking to purchase a o31 capable passenger car set with led lights.
How many years can I go back to know it would have LED lighted interiors? I have my eyes on an MTH Railking set from 2013 but cannot find if they are LED lights.
Brad
2013 will almost certainly still be incandescent bulbs. Truthfully, starting a new topic for something like this would probably be a good idea, and you might also give us the actual product number of any candidates. Truthfully, I don't see any of the Railking line with LED lighting mentioned, so they may not have gotten there at all. The Premier cars started getting LED's around 2017 I believe, and they're mentioned in the product listings.
Thank you Gunrunnerjohn. I have several Railking locomotives that have LED lights but not before 2017 so that may be the year it started.
I'll do some more research as far as passenger cars go and post a new topic if needed.
The item I'm looking at is MTH 30-67707 but it does not say LED, just lighted.
Thank you for the help you provide here on this forum.
Brad
What he said.
Out of curiosity what is it about LED lighting makes this a deciding feature? I only speak for myself of course but it seems you'd choose passenger cars because it's the right model/style/era, or right road name, etc. rather than if it had LED vs. incandescent bulbs.
I assume you are specifically referring to the interior lights. There have been cars using bulbs for interior lighting but LEDs for, say, the marker lights. Also, if you're operating conventional mode the issue of what is often called constant-voltage lighting (same brightness irrespective of track voltage) is not a given just because it's LED technology. Likewise, flicker tolerance is not necessarily a given just because it uses LED technology.
Just want to be sure you're getting what you want!
@stan2004 posted:What he said.
Out of curiosity what is it about LED lighting makes this a deciding feature?
LED's require less power for the same amount of light.
Rusty
I had to "upgrade" the LED lighting in my rather expensive Premier Strasburg Woodside passenger cars due to the lack of either DCS protection or capacitors to prevent flicker. I'm with Stan, you may want to select the cars based on other attributes, the LED issue can be fixed. 
Understood, thank you. Just figured with LED lighting I would not have to change out blown bulbs. I'm running dcs at 18+ volts. Just figured LEDs lasted forever and were brighter so I figured I would just stick with the most recent technology. That's all.
I'm only 4 years into the hobby so I have a habit of looking for the more recent items.
Brad
Nothing wrong with looking for modern items, just sometimes other factors are more important than a feature that's pretty easily fixed.
As far as color temperature, what is best for passenger car lighting? I see there is cool white, warm white, bright white, etc. Any product link to Ebay or other suppliers would be appreciated.
It's all what your taste are when it comes to LED color. I went with warm light for my conversion. EBAY is a four letter word on OGR. Not sure links are allowed. Search for LED light strips brings up hundreds. I also purchase LM117 buck converters on the bay also. Just add a full wave bridge rectifier on the input, maybe a filtering cap and set the output voltage to the desired brightness. Did 11 MTH madison cars for less than 40 bucks.
The color temperature of the LED's will depend on the era of the passenger cars. For instance, the old Woodside passenger cars look best with yellow or amber, also heavyweights I like to go that way with as well. Slightly more modern cars I go with the warm white, 2700-3000K wavelength. For truly modern cars that you want to emulate florescent lighting, consider the bright white strips.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Consider this eBay module, auction #: 122186424028, $1.39. Add a bridge rectifier in front of the input to convert the AC to DC, and you have constant intensity adjustable lighting with any input voltage.
Boost Buck DC adjustable step up down Converter XL6009 Module Voltage
Hi John,
Need your help!!! Please check the photo I've attached. I have an MTH passenger car that I put this boost buck board in (per your good advice) and tested it with my trusty 1035 transformer. I measured 12.5vac from the transformer before I connected the alligator clips to the power leads. (the black leads connect to the truck) the power from the truck goes to the bulb which I routed to my bridge rectifier.... then the output of course, goes to about a food of LED lighting strip. All was good until....the circuit and LED's began to get red hot. I shut the transformer immediately. Do I need a properly placed dropping resistor??? As usual, your help is greatly appreciated.... 
Dumb question but did you adjust the dc output from the converter? I think it is the little screw on the blue box.
I did not! I’ll have to try it! Thank you 🙏!!!
My thought too. Put a meter on it and adjust the output to the recommended voltage for the led strip
@cjack posted:My thought too. Put a meter on it and adjust the output to the recommended voltage for the led strip
Will do, thanks!
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