MTH Amtrak Superliner LED Upgrade in Pictures

Nice, I have 11 cars I need to do yet. The incandescent bulbs trip the breaker on my 180 bricks when I run smoke 

Yep, I have eight of these, and I'll be doing them all. 

Here's the before and after shots.

Before, 4 bulbs on top, two on the bottom.

After, 24 LED's on top, 15 on the bottom.  The lighting is very even all the way across.  I see one little thing I'd like to fix.  The stairway from the lower level isn't really lit, I'll have to stick an LED above it to illuminate it.  Should be a very easy fix.

They look good 

That stairwell is a lawsuit waiting to happen!!

Nice job, as usual, GRJ!

Looking excellent; thanks for the step-by-step "how to", including the connectors.

How many "passengers" will each car receive?

I'll have to light the starway, can't feed the lawyers too much, they get greedy!

I'll probably give them a few downstairs and 15-20 upstairs.  The full dome I have will probably get more.

GRJ,  I did mine last year with your LED module regulators.   They truly reduced the voltage drop on my double tracked overhead layout.  I have four Superliners and six other Amtak passenger cars.  Also, I just installed four analog lights from those passenger cars in a Burger King model I'm working on for the table layout.

Hopefully, you can see that these modules can be adjusted for intensity.  The second pic may show this variation better.

The very far from finished Burger doodle, lit with those leftover Amtrak passenger car lights.

Jerry

Very nice John! They make a big difference. 

great post for reference on your product! The trouble with this is once I started, it seems there's no end! I still have more to do. I quit when I got to some G scale cabooses and never did the conversion of those, and the rest of the fleet of cars.

I have a bunch of cars I haven't done, I just want to use these next weekend, so I figured I better get cracking!   I figure if I don't use my product, people may start to doubt it's a good idea.

Looking good, John.  I still have 5 UP passenger cars to convert yet. 3 of them are vista domes which take a little longer to do due to the 2 levels.  I also have 7 ARR passenger cars I would like to convert.   I’ll need to buy another roll of LEDs and a few more of the regulator modules.   I had put the recently purchased  2 ARR cars on the track to see if they had LED lighting.  They still had incandescent bulbs which produced an orange light.

Larry

Some of the dome cars are tricky, I end up using #30 wirewrap wire in either black, white, or clear to sneak up to the dome to drive the lights.  In extreme cases, I have at least four different small LED strip segments, all wired with the fine wire to get the job done.  As it happens, other than the fact that there's no place to run the track power under the floor, these SuperLiner cars are very easy.  I had a K-Line dome car with no place to put lights on the dome, so I did floor lighting on that one, it actually worked out really nice.

In all cases, I try to install the lighting so that you can completely separate the various parts of the car for maintenance, it really drives me nuts when I open a passenger car and I have spaghetti wiring stringing between the parts!  

I also get the same reaction when I open an upgraded locomotive and the shell is wired permanently to the chassis.  What in the world were the people thinking???

Looks great. This is inspiring me to get cracking on LED passenger car conversions. I have a several sets that I've been waiting to do.

Some cars are very easy, lots of the MTH Premier cars are really easy.  Others, like many K-Line cars, are a giant PITA.  However, once you've been around the block a few times, they tend to fall into place.   I find the MTH Railking cars to be more difficult than the Premier cars, many of the RK cars cut corners on how they were wired.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Some cars are very easy, lots of the MTH Premier cars are really easy.  Others, like many K-Line cars, are a giant PITA.  However, once you've been around the block a few times, they tend to fall into place.   I find the MTH Railking cars to be more difficult than the Premier cars, many of the RK cars cut corners on how they were wired.

John,

I've 3-4 sets of the old Lionel 027-style passenger cars that I want to convert. To be exact, they are modern remakes in the conventional classics series. I pulled the roofs off and it looks like they should be fairly easy to do.

Btw, I am probably going to pick up a handful of your conversion kits from Henning's.  

Most cars are easy to do, there are just some "stinkers" in the crowd.

John,

Just to be clear before I start, is the pair of red/black wires on the bottom right of the first photo spliced to the track pickup roller and to the connector that mates with the mating connector shown in the second photo.?

A little hard to see clearly in photo 1.

Thanks,

joe

John, Great Post of "How To" LED lighting, one comment, the 1st photo of the chassis in the upper right the (2) white connectors are laying on top of each other, which it took me a second zoomed in look to see clearly, if they were seperated in the picture may have been clearer separation. Also I know you have listed where to buy the MTH (2mm JST-PH) connectors male and female, and the Molex 2.5 connectors, I just can't seem to find where I stashed the info in my memory banks, could you post this info again

Thanks Dean 

I found the female connector at Allied Electronics. It's a Molex part no. 22-03-5025 at $0.06 each.  Can't seem to find the Molex male complementary connector though. Any help appreciated.   Joe

Rigatoni Express Railroad posted:

I found the female connector at Allied Electronics. It's a Molex part no. 22-03-5025 at $0.06 each.  Can't seem to find the Molex male complementary connector though. Any help appreciated.   Joe

Joe, Have you tried another supplier like DigiKey? They usually have everything.

So how's your wireless rolling stock project coming along?  

The idea being the passenger car lighting can be slaved to one of the engine's light circuits.  Then I could turn the Superliner door brake lights on and off under command control when the train reaches the station.  You don't want to open the doors unless the brakes are set!  Otherwise that's another lawsuit. 

I don't recommend trying this at home...but here's how it was done:

http://www.jcstudiosinc.com/Superliner-Marker-Lights

Stan, thanks for an excellent tutorial on techniques for adapting LED's to applications not obvious to me.

Rigatoni Express Railroad posted:

Just to be clear before I start, is the pair of red/black wires on the bottom right of the first photo spliced to the track pickup roller and to the connector that mates with the mating connector shown in the second photo.?

A little hard to see clearly in photo 1.

You do know that you can zoom in by clicking on the picture, right? FWIW, the colors actually change on the opposite ends. Not cool I know, but I had a reason. I wanted the wire to lay flat so I could tack it down neatly. Truthfully, for the rest of them I'll probably use all black wire, no real reason for colors there.

Rigatoni Express Railroad posted:

I found the female connector at Allied Electronics. It's a Molex part no. 22-03-5025 at $0.06 each.  Can't seem to find the Molex male complementary connector though. Any help appreciated.   Joe

JST-PH, Header (male) 455-1704-ND, housing 455-1165-ND, Pins 455-2148-1-ND, all Digikey Numbers.  Molex header (male) WM18886-ND, housing WM18873-ND, Pins W9661CT-ND, all Digikey numbers.  I use the Engineer PA-09 crimp tool for all of the connectors.

stan2004 posted:

So how's your wireless rolling stock project coming along?  

The idea being the passenger car lighting can be slaved to one of the engine's light circuits.  Then I could turn the Superliner door brake lights on and off under command control when the train reaches the station.  You don't want to open the doors unless the brakes are set!  Otherwise that's another lawsuit. 

Super cool Stan, but I don't think that will happen on this iteration.   If I did that, I'd probably consider pickups on a wheel and just have it red unless you stopped for several seconds.  Dirt simple module, probably something like a retriggerable 555 circuit, and just let the wheel sensor trigger it.

The trick is, to have the door open when it goes green!

I'm sure they look very fine with your upgrade, just as my Pennsy and NYC cars look which you upgraded so nicely!

That's the effect we're going for.

stan2004 posted:

So how's your wireless rolling stock project coming along?  

The idea being the passenger car lighting can be slaved to one of the engine's light circuits.  Then I could turn the Superliner door brake lights on and off under command control when the train reaches the station.  You don't want to open the doors unless the brakes are set!  Otherwise that's another lawsuit. 

I don't recommend trying this at home...but here's how it was done:

http://www.jcstudiosinc.com/Superliner-Marker-Lights

Stan, what size are the surface mount LED's you used; do you have a p/n; a vendor?

They look like they could be used for a variety of lighting applications in passenger cars.

Stan, where do you get your fiber optic from? I went looking a few weeks back and never ordered. I saw some tea candle lights and other items using fiber that seemed like a better deal than ordering the fiber optic itself. Most everything seemed to be sold out at Christmas time. I had hoped to find some at the cheap stores, but no luck.

Pingman posted:

 

Stan, what size are the surface mount LED's you used; do you have a p/n; a vendor?

Those look like 0603 (0.06" x 0.03") and they are lighting up 1mm (0.04") end-glow fiber cable.  These are available in all colors for pennies a piece on eBay - search "0603 amber LED" or "0603 green LED" for example.  You will need good eyesight and a steady hand to solder wires to the tiny pads/contacts.  30 gauge or smaller wires!  

It appears the additional search phrase "pre-wired" will pull up LEDs that have thin wires attached but the cost goes up substantially.

Engineer-Joe posted:

Stan, where do you get your fiber optic from? 

Mail order.  I don't remember exact source since I got my life-time supply many years ago.  Basically, you buy it by the foot in diameters 0.25mm, 0.5mm, 0.75mm, 1.0mm, 1.5mm, 2.0mm, etc..  I'm thinking like 10 cents/ft to 25 cents/ft depending on diameter but you may get stuck buying a 100 ft spool or whatever.  I just looked on eBay and it appears you can buy just 1 meter lengths in your choice of diameter.  For train lighting you typically want "end glow" fiber - so you drive one end of the fiber with an LED, and the light comes out the other end with minimal loss of brightness.  More popular for architectural or decorative purposes is "side glow" fiber where you drive one end of the fiber with an LED but the light comes out all along the length of the fiber.  You probably want the "end glow" type.

You might find a decorative lamp or light gadget that has bundled fiber with dozens or hundreds of strands of fiber that splay out to a "thousand points of light".  

If you don't need the flexibility/bend-a-bility of cable, you can usually find clear acrylic transparent rod at most hobby shops.  They usually come in 1 ft lengths in various diameters for maybe $1 or so.  These behave like end-glow fiber - so illuminate on one end and most of the light comes out the other end.

Bless you Stan for the LED info; and twice bless you for the "pre-wired" tip--no way my "hands of stone" solder to those LED's.  It will be enough of a challenge just to grasp the wires attached to the LEDs.

Yes, Uncle John...I did see the larger view but my old eyes still could not tell if the black areas were tape used to splice the wires from the roller pickup or, if it was just some wire hold down method. I'll guess that it is a place where wires were spliced.

Thanks,  Joe

Sorry, yes, that's heatshrink, I don't use crappy electrical tape in my upgrades.   I spliced in the extra wires to go to the regulator module as the wires that were there go to the connectors to join the two pickups.  Other than the extra wire for the jumper between the two with the connectors, I didn't need any extra wire for the job, just used what was already in there.

I ran into an interesting issue with the dome car, the windows are wrap-around so you could see the side of the LED strip, I didn't like that look.  However, in looking at the spare parts, the obvious solution presented itself.  I just stripped everything out of one of the old bulb holders and cut away all the middle supports.  I screwed that back in, and it neatly covers the sides and still lets the LED's illuminate the interior of the car.

Thanks again Stan!

 I bought some tiny surface mount LEDs that are so small I couldn't work with them. I actually lost a couple when I sneezed and I turned my head! I broke one because of the too stiff wire I was testing with. I bought a few supplies to retry and I quit trying after that anyways. I have too many other projects waiting.

 So I would also recommend the pre-wire ones to make life easier. Unless you have good soldering and handling skills with tiny components. Someday I want to add step lights to my scratch built diesels. I have done a few with bigger regular LEDs. I think the tiny ones might be better for scale details.

Right.  If you need a low-profile LED, this typically forces you to a surface-mount (SMD) style LED.

Working with the SMD LEDs can be tedious.  In addition to buying pre-wired SMD LEDs, here's another idea.  The cheap LED strips of course use SMD LEDs and are available in all colors.  The individual LEDs are of course pre-mounted on a flexible printed-wire strip.  Nothing says you can't cut up the strip into "individual" LEDs which might make soldering wires a little easier.  The photo above was from a different topic but kind of illustrates the concept.  As shown in the top photo you can typically also scrape off the surface to expose the copper printed wires (traces) which is another solder attachment point.

And if your application requires a resistor, note that on LED strips, each segment-of-3 typically has 1 resistor as shown on the right side.  The resistor value may not be correct for your particular application but this type of resistor goes for a couple pennies each and can be swapped.

John, Thanks for the clarification for me. Appreciate the time.  Nice solution with the old strip too. I'll use that idea also.  Joe

MR_P posted:

 

...Looking for recomendations, thanks !

I recommend copying your post to a new thread.  Size and power issues with HO DC are sufficiently different than O AC as to cause confusion if continued here - in my opinion that is.

I have 5 K-line 21" Amtrak superliners.  On one of the cars the red marker lights on both sides of the car do not light. I have not yet investigated the problem.  They appear to be very small red colored bulbs.  If I convert the car to LED lighting, what size and shape LED might fit in the space now occupied by the bulbs.  Would I then be able to attach them to one of GRJ's lighting strip boards along with the white LED lighting strip?

Thank you,

Ron 

There are a variety of LED's that would be suitable, and you can certainly use the lighting board with those, they just require a little extra wiring.  This 2mm ceramic LED is what MTH and Lionel use for markers and class lights, they should fit almost anywhere.

Lumex SSL-LX203CIT

Thanks John,

I will check it out. Hopefully they will fit.

Ron

I've used 2mm post LED's in some K-Line cars, but I don't have those to look at to see if they're the same.

I just paint the inside part with Liquid Tape to prevent light leakage inside the coach.