For the last few years I was never impressed with the dim lighting on my Lionel Christmas aquarium cars. I Purchased a passenger car lighting kit from Hennings trains developed by our own gun runner John. I also added my own embellishments to the inside of the car because the Christmas load was kind of boring. This is what I came up with.
lighting
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Looks pretty good !
Looks great! Do you have a 'before' picture by any chance?
@PRRick posted:Looks great! Do you have a 'before' picture by any chance?
Unfortunately not. I do have some videos on my channel with the car running.
Another one of the Gunrunner's great lighting kits. Nice lighting for this car . Great solution and very cool idea on the theme .
Really nice .
That’s a really great improvement. I’ve repurposed some of GRJ’s kits for things other than passenger car lighting too. I don’t understand the science/tech dimension of the power module but I sure know that it works!
Wow that really looks great. Good idea, I have a couple of cars that are similar that I could update. I assume that your car originally looked similar to the car in the photos shown in this OGR forum post? https://ogrforum.com/...-lionel-aquarium-car It appears that those are Hallmark miniature ornaments, I have used some on flat cars for a Christmas train they are very well detailed and there is a lot of variety you could build many different cars with different themes. I will have to try your design it looks really good.
I have a Lionel Poinsettia car http://www.lionel.com/products...ia-mint-car-6-29628/ if I can find some miniature poinsettia's of different colors would like to update this some time as the cardboard insert does not look as good as in this photo on the Lionel Website.
I really like those lighting kits they are great. But you can also get good results for a lot less $ with the LED lights from Evans Designs. I have put Silver foil tape on the roof of some passenger or Christmas cars then shine a couple of the LED lights up to the foil lined roof at an angle that gives great even lighting through out the car. https://evandesigns.com/produc...eds-for-transformers They have lights that will work well from 7 to 19 volts and work on the AC track. Different colors and sizes of bulb. A few $'s per car for a couple of bulbs and just 2 wire hook up. The light is good at even low volts if you are running conventional power.
The best thing I like about John’s kit is I can adjust the brightness if I want to tone it down a bit.
kj356....... I have a couple of RK proto2 steamers that I want to change over to the LEDs and still want to have the lights come on like the incandescents by just wiring them to the existing lighting wires ,is this possible with these lights that you show.?🤔
I have installed individual LED bulbs in other engines but I used track power and wasn't very pleased with having the lights on without the engines on start up . 😑
Love the embellishments! Great job, Chris.
@Dallas Joseph posted:kj356....... I have a couple of RK proto2 steamers that I want to change over to the LEDs and still want to have the lights come on like the incandescents by just wiring them to the existing lighting wires ,is this possible with these lights that you show.?🤔
I have installed individual LED bulbs in other engines but I used track power and wasn't very pleased with having the lights on without the engines on start up . 😑
I would ask John about that. I did something like that a few years back and damaged the board. Ever since I have just went straight to the pickup rollers if I wanted an LED.
@kj356 posted:I really like those lighting kits they are great. But you can also get good results for a lot less $ with the LED lights from Evans Designs. I have put Silver foil tape on the roof of some passenger or Christmas cars then shine a couple of the LED lights up to the foil lined roof at an angle that gives great even lighting through out the car. https://evandesigns.com/produc...eds-for-transformers They have lights that will work well from 7 to 19 volts and work on the AC track. Different colors and sizes of bulb. A few $'s per car for a couple of bulbs and just 2 wire hook up. The light is good at even low volts if you are running conventional power.
I wasn't sure about the LEDs on the Evans site for use on ps2 engines
I have used GRJs LED passenger lighting kits with great success and I have used the bayonet LED bulbs from Town and Country for the RK switches and throws. The bulbs i see on the Evans site have different componants built in the wiring which I thought might be soldered into the existing incandescent lighting wires. 😐
It still takes three of us to get a light bulb screwed in . 
This is the other car I just finished. The camera makes them look brighter than in person.
@Chris Lonero, huge improvement--well done!
A lot of fun to see these Chris. Nice work.
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
