MTH CA-1 marker lights

I had a CA1 marker bulb go out, opened up the caboose, which was a bit of a pain in its own right, only to find that the bulbs are glued into the lantern, so removing the bulb just breaks the base out of the glass. I just gave up and disconnected the other one and it runs without lights in the markers. I bet if you can find someone who has the official MTH repair kit, the bulb is in there.

I have a UP version of this caboose with one marker lamp out. Sounds like it will remain that way for a while.... There has to be a LED bulb that could replace it?

I did find this at Brasseur...no details, but looks promising enough to try.

...except it's $4 plus $3.75 handling and $5.70 shipping

This seems like a better deal. I'd order the MTH harness, but I'm not sure it is even the right one. No pictures like are on the Lionel site.

C:US:3160">http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=151297900468&ssPageName=ADME:LC:US:3160

I haven't found a 2mm white led...3mm but no 2mm.

These might be good...there's plenty of room for the square end of it.

Since the markers are probably not white, couldn't you use a red 2mm LED?  The ceramic ones used for markers on many MTH and Lionel products are 2mm maximum diameter, no square end on them.

The side lens is green and rear facing one is red. I thought about the ceramic red and almost tried one to see what the green lens passes.

Try a yellow 2mm ceramic, it may do the trick.

Probably will. Thanks.

I never thought about the SMT stuff, and I have a ton of them here that I use for projects!

Good idea Stan!

One more idea. I think this might work for the CA-1 because you apparently have space inside the caboose itself.

It's no doubt easier to wire-up 3mm or 5mm white LEDs.  So use 2mm acrylic rod or plastic lighting fiber (about 10 cents per foot) and make an adapter/holder using heat shrink.  The drill bit is used in place of the acrylic rod when shrinking the tubing so the plastic doesn't melt/deform.  Then pop out the bit and insert the rod.  Obviously the thinner rod then inserts into the marker light housing.

According to the thread below, the CA-1 already has a DC voltage regulator which ought to simplify LED hookup.

https://ogrforum.com/t...-a-caboose-with-leds

I don't know how well the 2mm rod will light up the sides, that's one of the reasons they use the incandescent bulbs.  Even the LED's will clearly be much brighter in one axis, but the fiber I've used has no significant light out the sides.

I wondered about that. I ended up ordering some of these and picked the diffuse version for that reason of lighting up the sides. It remains to be seen how well this works...but I thought it might be a good solution since those incandescent bulbs get really hot. They draw about 50ma at 6vdc each. The LEDs draw about 20ma at 2.x vdc and most of it is outside the lantern housing with these particular LEDs.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2mm-Di...2WD-25-/191206753247?

Hard to say about the side light, I don't get nearly as much as out the front of any LED's.  I have roughed up the surface of them to get more light out the sides, it helps.

Take that drill bit and reverse Champfer the end of the rod.

IE Drill a funnel shape in the end, the light will reflect to the sides.

The steeper the angle in the bit end the better it will work up to 45°.

Further improvement can be had by painting the inside of the funnel chrome.

I had a similar situation modeling the forward and rear facing door brake light indicators on my Amtrak Superliner coaches.  By shaping the end of the acrylic rod the light will scatter.  As shown below, the LED was inside the car, the acrylic rod protrudes through the car wall into the brake light housing.

Hopefully your 2mm LEDs will be bright enough; I didn't see any specs on the eBay listing.  Perhaps the ends of those LEDs can also be shaped to scatter the light if need be.  One advantage of the acrylic rod approach is you can get inexpensive super-bright white LEDs that will about blind you to look at.  I'd think getting sufficient brightness out at the lenses should be do-able as long as the tip of the rod/fiber can be worked-over.

All good info. Lots of options now.

I'm going to have to try that with one of the heavier optical fibers and see how it works to the side.  I've had occasion to want to do that, maybe I'm missing a bet.

So far. I bought some 1/16 inch acrylic dowel rod ($1 for 3 feet of it ) and made this up with a 3mm white LED.

Not bad...not done, maybe will try some more blunt end of rod shapes. The red lense is much more red which the iPhone washed out on, and the green about the same. The uncovered part of the LED inside the cabin almost does it for the cabin illumination...not so bright, more prototypical.

Chuck, the photos don't work.  Not sure what you did wrong.

Huh. I could see them, but I erased them and reloaded them without something I did before that may have been the issue. How about now?

Photos look good.  

Did you know/plan ahead of time to double-dip and use the LED for interior lighting?  If so you're one clever guy!

Nope...like Teflon, at least I recognized it.

Looks good, I'll have to take a look at that rod for some markers that are hard to reach with regular LED's.