control of flickering lights

Do both trucks have center rail pickups? Are both of the truck pickups tied together? Also, check the ground points between the trucks and the car frame. There needs to be a good connection there. Otherwise there is probably not much more you can do using bulbs for lighting.

Trainman129

Switching to leds are the way to go. Run cooler, take less power, better light distribution and with a capacitor, no more flicker. If you are handy you can make your own or get the ones from Gunrunnerjohn and away you go!  I'm slowly but surely switching over to leds and love the results. 

I would convert the cars to LEDs with a capacitor in the circuit. There are numerous threads here describing methods. Some of mine approaches are here

LINK

Dale H

I'll concur that you'd be better off going with LED's.  GRJ's kits look good and others have already linked thread on the subject.  

That said, if sticking with incandescent lights, you could use a diode and capacitor to power the bulbs on half wave AC.  They will probably be a bit dimmer this way, but it seems simplest, as a full wave bridge rectifier would probably bring the DC voltage too high for the bulbs without additional parts.  

yes they do as well as proper grounds

Cleaning the track, rollers, and wheels will help.

Yes, you can use capacitance to stop flicker. For bulbs you would need much more in the way of caps too. So size wise, and electrically, for O, LEDs really would be the way to go once you decide you're going to mess with things. They will save the power for the locos etc. etc.

 Now you just have to decide on the exact color!

Oh boy, worms!

I also am working on moving to LEDS h9owever it takes time and i do a display for the local library christmas party so i am working n things now to get them done by december

guys this is why i post on here so i can find out things i don't know and learn

thank you all you answered my question I will deal with these things this year as is and wonk on moving over to LED Lighting for next year

thank you all again

By all means get one of GRJ's LED lighting boards to experiment with.

But I'll take your question at face value and answer it this way.  It can be done using a so-called step-down/step-up voltage regulator module from eBay plus a few extra components.  It would look something like this except with a much larger capacitor.

You can read the arcane technical details and get a feel for the level of soldering, wiring and component-level fiddling in this blog posting:

http://www.jcstudiosinc.com/Co...-Using-12V-LED-Strip

When all's said and done, the LED circuits reduce lighting power by a factor of 10x or so.  So, in round numbers you need to store about 10x more energy than in the LED circuits.  The energy storage is done in the capacitor so that's the key variable.

Whether LED or incandescent, you need energy storage and no one has come up with a practical way to store "AC" energy so you need a DC storage device (capacitor, supercapacitor, battery, etc.).  In both cases the circuits convert AC to DC using a bridge rectifier.  In both cases some regulator circuitry is used to deliver constant power from the storage device to the lights.  In both cases you now drive the lights using DC - LEDs require it and incandescent bulbs can go either way.

So if you have the space to install the parts, I'd say less than $10 per car via eBay...$2.50 for the regulator module, a few bucks for the capacitor(s), and a few bucks for the assorted "glue" components.  The circuit would have 2 input wires from the track voltage, and 2 output wires to the lights; in other words the same kind of modification/hookup to the LED lights.

Incandescent bulbs have a warmth that can't be duplicated by LEDs with present technology.  Some, maybe most, guys will say they can't see the difference or the benefits of LEDs far outweigh the difference.  To each his own.

Stan, if going that far, there is little point in not finishing the job with LED's.  the nice thing about keeping the current bulbs is you don't need a regulator, so long as the voltage doesn't get too high.  All you need is a diode and a (very) large capacitor if you don't care about how much voltage/current passes through.  it's only the LED's that are so picky about it.  

okay I will leave them alone this time but change over to leds by next christmas

thanks

LEDs are actually very easy to use, you do have to follow a couple of very simple rules.  Once you get that nailed down, they have a lot of advantages.