Lighting a train - Christmas lights like the Canadian Pacific

Thought of it in HO but never went through with it. Was going to use an Athearn Dash-9 dummy. Light it internally then drill holes and fill with different color transparent paints. 

 There are battery powered mini/mini leds at walmart that might work for you. I wanted to do it in G scale but couldn't find the CP version. I got the CN instead!

@ Mr Bill...did a version last year, using battery powered mini-led string, a string of larger one on the coal car (a bit of Christmas tree shape) and for the wreath/ tree on the engine used LED pin.

And Miniatur Wunderland has this version in HO

Do you recall which miniature lights you used?  The ones I have seen at target/homedepot/Michaels are too big for the task.  

I'm planning on creating a holiday train. It's a long term goal, so I probably won't have it done for a while. I have limited electronics knowledge, so I'll be trying to learn as I go along. I won't be trying to create a scale train as I run traditional equipment anyway, but I do want to create a similar look.

For animated or figure displays, I'm considering using some of the old Dept. 56 brite lites, Lemax yard lights, Miller Eng signs, and during this time of year, I check the holiday aisle at drug stores and various places looking for small lighted objects. I had better luck last year than this year. Target had some small Philips brand battery powered leds with snowflakes and other shapes. Most of the items I see in stores are too large for use with trains.

The light strings are going to be difficult to recreate using commercially available products. The spacing between lights tend to be 4" or more. Even when the leds are small, the base the led fits into remains large, often several times larger than the led. At some point, I'll probably try to wire my own light strings to get proper spacing and smaller size, but that is going to be many hours of tedious work, and I'll need to ask for help on the electrical forum to make sure I use the right components and build a correct circuit.

As Bill S. mentioned, another method is drilling holes in the locomotive or car, so just the bulb shows on the outside. That way the base of the led and associated resistors and wires are out of view. Last year, there was a photo posted of a boxcar made by a member of the Pittsburgh Independent Hi-Railers with led bulbs in holes in the car. I don't think any details were posted.  The locomotive and cars shown in the Miniatur Wunderland appear to use this technique as I don't see any wires outside the cars. They did a fantastic job. Looking around on the internet, I've found old photos of the CP Holiday Train where they used intermodal containers as part of the train. I've got some of the old Lionel traditional double stack cars, so I'm planning on using them (besides, if you mess up a container, it's easy to switch it out for another one) rather than buy a bunch of hi-cube boxcars. The container cars look good in the video.

It is amazing what you can find on the internet, so many potential hobbies, so little time.  It looks like the guys that do Sci Fi models, like Star Trek ships, do fiber optics for lighting effects.  I found several examples of "how to" on youtube and other model sites for drilling, gluing, and attaching to a LED.  I think that it may be easier than doing a ton of LEDs.  You still will need to drill the smaller holes, but the number of LEDs can be minimized.  I think that a Arduino with 3 or 4 RGB LEDs could be the ticket. Use fiber cable of 25 to 60 fibers each per LED.  

This volume of fibers, you could do designs on the car.  Maybe get a peanuts Christmas car and outline the scenes.  The Arduino could be programmed to do drive the RGBs to flash, chase, and roll colors to make the scene come to life.

trestrain fan, here are a few arduino links.  I am just learning this platform using the kits and youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoG_Czyr7z0  - This guys tutorials are topnotch. 

http://www.adafruit.com/products/170  - Project number 12 is a RGB LED.  I have this kit and it uber easy to use.  Doing the LED drives that flash is not difficult with the arduino.  I was also thinking of using a arduino to animate our gateman with a few servos to push the gateman out and another servo to swing the arm.

Good day!

Bill

I have thought about doing the CP holiday train myself. Wish Lionel/MTH would do one. Check out what Evans has for LED's at the top of the page.

used the Lemax one..they come in 36 chasing string or 50 regular.

Wow, thanks for posting the info, those links lead to some amazing work. Sounds like it could be the next generation of miniature lighting effects. For the second link, I downloaded the manual. You are talking about circ-12 on page 30-31?

Some of the little lighted items I mentioned finding in drug stores have a similar light display where the color changes RGB and in between. There is just a little base with the circuit and led, and then a translucent plastic or glass enclosure in the shape of Santa, a snowman, etc. on top that reflects the light. I found some cool little angels last year, but not much luck this year, where the trend is to larger figures (too tall for trains), or figures filled with liquid and glitter. If I can find some on the clearance sales, I may pick them up just to get the base with the lights and circuitry.

But, your idea to build it gives you much more flexibility. The fiber optic / led combo sounds like it may offer some really neat possibilities, not only in creating a miniature effect (much smaller than leds outside the boxcar), but also lighting animation with chasing, flashing, and changing colors.

I don't know anything about fiber optics. Could you post links to some of info you found on "drilling, gluing, and attaching to a LED."

Thanks.

Thanks for those links - some great work out there.

--Greg

The Twin City Model Railroad Club in St.Paul - one of the oldest O gauge railroad clubs - has an excellent model of the CP Holiday Train. You could try contacting them, they're now called the Twin City Model Railroad Museum, to find more info on how they did it. It's pretty amazing!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c15F4udwZVk

http://www.tcmrm.org/

Thanks for the link to the video about the Twin City Model Railroad Museum Christmas Train. It is pretty cool. The locomotives and the first few boxcars and the caboose have some spectacular lighting effects. I noticed a stock K-Line flat car with Santa and Reindeer and flashing railroad crossing sign, and a few of the gondolas have a load of Lemax yard lights. It would be interesting to see if they can provide any info on how the created the special effects.

@ Stix...thanks for the video link...an amazing sight...

Maybe OGR could ask them and do an article on it...even if it's only for 1 car.