Completed my 1st (of many) Passenger Car conversions to LEDs....

Clean install and very well thought out.

@Junior, excellent write-up and photos, including a comparison shot of conventional lighting and strip LEDs.

Great idea to position the pot so it can be adjusted without disassembling the car.  Was that an original thought you had, or did you see someone else do it first?  I ask because I've read many posts here dealing with installations of LEDs/modules and that was a new one on me.

Also, it made me realize that even if for some reason the pot can't be positioned as yours was relative to the door opening, mounting it vertically on the plain end of the pax car would mean the pot could be reached by loosening two screws and removing the car end.

Good luck with your future installations

Nice work Junior. Thanks for sharing.

@Scotie, @RSJB18 ......Thanks for the kudos !

@Pingman .....Positioning of the pot was my idea (every once in a while I get a good idea....at least that's what my Wife sez !).

And your right.....you could remove the end of the car to access and adjust the pot.

I always "hold my breath when" removing/replacing screws that are in plastic tabs or posts!

Either way, I don't see the pot requiring frequent adjustment. I just wanted a way to initially set and then even out the brightness among the pax cars.

Good idea with the positioning,  One suggestion that might help all around.  You can fold the tab on the regulator over the capacitor to allow you to mount closer to the rear of the car, easier to line up with the pot.

An elegant discourse!

Hi @gunrunnerjohn ....funny you mention that. As I was lining things up I actually thought about bending the regulator bracket down. But I wasn't sure how durable the regulator was and was afraid of breaking it. The bracket did "feel" pretty durable, so I decided to leave it as is.

I bend them down all the time, gives you a lower profile for the module.  The tab folds right on top of the capacitor like it was made to do that.

@Mark V. Spadaro ....Thanks for the kudos. I was hoping to make the explanation clear and to show this is a pretty simple, straightforward project.

To be honest, I did run into one snag. You have to remove the brackets that hold the pax car trucks onto the car frame otherwise you can't slide the body off of the frame. This means the trucks are "floppin around" and held to the car frame by the single center rail pickup wire.

As I was sliding the body back onto the car frame, a pick up wire broke loose. So now the truck was loose from the car frame. This meant the loose pick up wire had to be resoldered back onto the truck's center rail pick up. But that was the only casualty and was quickly fixed.

Thanks @gunrunnerjohn ! I'll give it a shot on the next conversion.

@Junior posted:

Hi Everyone....

I seem to recall reading some where in the OGRR Forums people wanted pictures showing the conversion of a passenger car's light bulbs to LEDs. As a result, I wanted to share with everyone the steps I went through to convert my passenger cars from bulb lighting to LED lighting.

Disclaimer #1. This posting does not cover things like what type of LEDs should be used, what gauge wire should be used, how the LED lighting circuit is wired to the passenger car chassis, etc. All these topics were covered ad nauseam in many other posts regarding this topic. 😀

Disclaimer #2. This topic covers conversions  being done to typical Lionel and Lionel-like 60' O gauge aluminum passenger cars only.

As part of doing the conversion, I thought is would be nice to be able to adjust lighting brightness without having to disassemble the passenger car in any way.

To make this happen, I made a bunch of the following brackets from sheet plastic.

GRJ's lighting circuit was then hot glued to this bracket then the bracket and circuit board was hot glued to the floor of the passenger car.

Before hot gluing the board/bracket in place, the tiny potentiometer on the board had to be aligned with the window in the door located in the end of the passenger car. This was done so that it was visible through the window. Below is a picture of the circuit's tiny "pot" visible through the window.

As mentioned above, doing this allows me to access/adjust the brightness of the LED's in the car without any disassembly.

Below is another view of all the components in place with all the wiring completed. Note that there's also a small white JST plug that connects the LED strip (that's attached to the roof of the car body) to the circuit board. The JST plug allows for disconnecting the LEDs from the bracket/board; allowing for complete removal of the car body from the floor if required.

The following picture shows the chassis of the car slid back onto the car body. The picture also shows the wiring tucked in before the ends of the car are put back on.

The final 3 pictures show the finished product and how it compares to a passenger car with the two original incandescent bulbs.

The finished/converted passenger car:

A passenger car with the two original bulbs:

A comparison of the two cars:

The whole process was really easy and went together quickly. In fact, it took more time to build the brackets than to complete the assembly.

I hope this post shows modelers how easy the whole project was to complete.

BTW...a very minimum amount of soldering was required to complete this project.

I have done the same thing for 20+ cars. On my cars that have furnished interiors I hid the circuit board in near the door and on some on the roof.  I use heat shrink tubes to connect the wires because I can hid the wires in the gap where the wires supplied power to the old bulbs.  This system is superior to the Lionel factory flicker-free in the Madison cars as Lionel uses only three LEDs mounted to a floor-mounted circuit board and the three “hot spots” are evident through the silhouettes.

@RixTrack, post some photos of your work, please.

Question:  why quote @Junior's post in its entirety if you don't make any specific reference to it in your reply?  Not being critical, just curious.

Hey Junior, thanks for posting that. Nice job with the bracket and placement of the LED power supply board. Well done!

When I upgraded my K-line 15" SP Daylight passenger cars to LED lighting with anti flicker power supply, I had a OMG are you kidding me moment! When I removed the body of the passenger cars there are these little tabs in the top of the body, probably for a PCA or some other component, that were spaced perfectly to install the LED power supplies. It was such a perfect interference fit that no glue, tape, or fastener was needed! It was like it was made for it. It made it easy to run the wires along the top of the car and down to the chassis, tucked away where the wires and PS can't be seen, as these cars have figures and seats instead of the silhouettes. Unfortunately my LED power supplies are not adjustable like yours. But fortunately, the brightness of this kit seems to be just about right. I upgraded all six cars just like this.

Here's some photos of the power supply installed in the tabs/slots in the car body.

Scott

@Pingman posted:

@RixTrack, post some photos of your work, please.

Question:  why quote @Junior's post in its entirety if you don't make any specific reference to it in your reply?  Not being critical, just curious.

I thought I attached photos for comparison.  But I guess it didn’t work ou that way.

Hey @WesternPacific2217..... all I can say is "Whaaaaa??" ! That is absolutely amazing!

Hey @RixTrack....great minds think alike! I would love see what you've done as well.

Very nice job, Junior!  That is a task I need to do someday.  I have all the parts for several cars already.

Nice Job. Looks great! For me to do something like this I would need someone to show me how to do the first one and than I could do all my pass cars. I was at a train show today talking to a guy on how to do this on my LGB cars. He carried all the parts but he was really busy with other customers.

@Junior posted:

The whole process was really easy and went together quickly. In fact, it took more time to build the brackets than to complete the assembly.

One suggestion to shorten the process and make it much simpler: There are all kinds of plastic L brackets available in hardware stores, Wal-Marts, on line, etc. etc. Very cheap. I think just buying some of these would be much better than going through the tedious and time-comsuming process of making them yourself from styrene sheets.

I converted all my SP daylight cars not long ago. All was well until I got to the full observation car. That took a bit more thinking, but glad they are converted over. No more half lit cars. It took the boards a little time to get in, but all the other components came from digikey. Well packaged and labeled whats what. Not all thrown into one bag.