Lighted fastrack

One outer rail is "hot" whenever the transformer is on and the other outer rail has a large section that is switched "on" when a set of wheels crosses over. This is accomplished by a gap in that outer rail as seen here:

There are several ways to do what you want. The easiest, cheapest, and most easily reversible is to turn the track upside down and disconnect the black wire plugged into the switched outer rail and plug it into the hot rail. Since the red and black wires are together as one cable, you can also move the red wire over (the red wire does not need to be moved, this is only to keep them together as a cable).

Note that if you have a Santa Claus gateman, you can connect it to those original connectors that will bring Santa out when a train comes by!

Thanks for the info !  I think the track would look great lit up under the tree.   I’m going to buy some of the lighted track and proceed.  And Yes I will set up the Santa gateman ,that’s perfect. Thanks again for sharing that.

Mark

So depending on which version of Lionel Santa gatekeeper you have, you need to know how to wire it to the lighted track. I could not find a specific place where Lionel explains this, but I did find instructions for how to use a  6-82038 3-pin 8" female pigtail. Do not buy this pigtail unless you need it for your version of the gatekeeper. But this diagram should help you with wiring. You want the light to stay lit always and the Santa to come out when the train comes by.