Light bulbs for MTH PCC trolley and Railking Madison passenger cars

PS-1 interior is an 18V bayonet, so you can get that anywhere.  The Headlight is a 1.5V gain of wheat.  The parts list for PS-1 is on MTH website so you can get those numbers.

If the Madison cars have bulbs they may be off track power at 18V or if a CV they most likely are 6V.  G

Thank you G. The base that that the light goes into has melted. Don't understand why that happened?

The reason for the melting is that you have too much voltage going to the cars. They may have 14v bulbs, not 18v. Switch to the 18v, this should help. I had the same problem with my early version Railking passenger cars. Or set your track voltage lower to 14v.

GGG knows much more than I do and he could be right, but I'm pretty sure the original bulbs in those cars, from the ps1 era, were 14's.

The melting occurs from a bad connection. Too much voltage would most likely just blow the bulb.

There's always LED lighting...

I know John. LOL. What do the light strips cost about. I just watched a Youtube video with a thank you, to you about the led lighting.

It's not that expensive to do the lighting if you buy the strips and solder a few wires.  You can do it with my lighting modules and your LED strips for less than $10/ea, and it's even cheaper if you don't mind assembling the few components on a perf-board and wiring them up, probably more like $3-4.

I'm on a mission to LED equip all my passenger cars, I'm about half way there.

We are talking about different bulbs and different lighting between these unit so it is best to see a picture.  A PCC car used a bayonet bulb on the frame, not a plastic holder in the top shell to light passenger area such as Trolley or doodle bug.

Those early on did use 14V bulbs which could over heat at higher DCS voltage, where as conventional ops were normally down around 10-11V.   The replacement is a 18V bi pin.   That does limit heat at DCS voltages.  G

gunrunnerjohn posted:

It's not that expensive to do the lighting if you buy the strips and solder a few wires.  You can do it with my lighting modules and your LED strips for less than $10/ea, and it's even cheaper if you don't mind assembling the few components on a perf-board and wiring them up, probably more like $3-4.

I'm on a mission to LED equip all my passenger cars, I'm about half way there.

I just completed this transformation on a set of MTH Madison cars, even though they already has 18 volt bulbs.  By removing 16 incandescents from track power, you reduce potential overload conditions, especially when running multiple passenger trains simultaneously.  The added benefits of tailoring brightness and flicker free operation justify the extra pennies along with the time spent.  It was a fun evenings project.

Bruce

I do MTH Premier cars in about 10-15 minutes from the time they're set on the bench to the time they're back together and done.  The biggest time variable is taking the cars apart and putting them back together.  If you have some cars like K-Line cars, sometimes they take a little more time.  Also, most MTH cars have the springs to bring power up to the lights.  I just tap into those wires in the shell, stick the regulator to the roof, and lay the strip in.