New Flyer heavyweights

Gunny, I did not get the newer passenger cars but I am not surprised the LED lighting is dimmer and less even than the older incandescent cars. I have the REA baggage car with LED lighting, it is dimmer and far less even that the prior incandescent lit baggage car. The picture below shows both, the unevenness in the REA car on the right is obvious , the PRR baggage is relatively much brighter than the picture shows.

I had this same problem when I converted a set of AM heavyweights and one of their old sets of 84’ lightweights to LED lighting. Since all those cars were disassembled already I added a strip of aluminum foil under the roof of each car. This eliminated the unevenness and made the cars slightly brighter. The outcome was a good improvement for minimal effort. I just have not gotten around to doing the same thing to my REA car.

Tom,

Thanks i will put adding foil on my to do list.

Gunny

Gunny, since you posted about the Lionel AF LED lighting I moved this task to the top of my to-do list and completed it this morning.

A total of eight screws must be removed to drop out the passenger car floor. I discovered the LED strip is in the roof shining down. Picture below. That is good if anyone plans to add interiors. The issue here is there are only two LED’s and they are way off center in the car. The AM cars have a strip of three evenly spaced LED’s mounted to the floor. Picture below just FYI.

I lined the walls and floor of the car with reflective foil. I use Martha’s wrap for this for two reasons, First and by far most important, is my wife said I could use her roll of it. Second, it has two benefits. The foil surface has fine pebbling that evenly scatters reflected light, and it is backed with a craft type paper that makes it easier to cut and handle and prevents the foil from wrinkling. Pictures below.

The result was excellent. The car is now about the same brightness as the incandescent versions and it is almost perfectly even despite only two off-center LED’s. The end windows in the vestibule doors are now brightly lit, as delivered they were barely visible.

Well done AmFlyer.  But it's a sad sign (actually as a modeler insulting) that that was all the lighting put into an S-gauge car by the manufacturer.  Particularly without any reflector.  Bare, or arguably less than bare, minimum to check the box for marketing as an "illuminated" car.  I suppose they could have used only one.  What did/does such a car cost?  Thanks.

The REA car is 2019430, retail is $89.99 in the 2020 AF catalog. I got mine a little under $80 from Ro.

Dave, I have a little different view on the purchasing of S gauge items. When I buy from Lionel I know that, with the exception of their passenger cars, the items will need either upgrades or repairs. The REA car is the first Lionel passenger car that needed an upgrade, it only took 20 minutes and 2" off the roll of Martha's wrap to make it perfect. For me, no big deal, but I wonder how Lionel could have allowed this car to be put in production with incorrectly positioned lighting.

All Lionel freight cars I purchase have $12 added to their cost because the trucks and couplers must be replaced with the 70T sprung roller bearing trucks with metal wheels to have a car that runs acceptably on my layout. For all Legacy engines I include a $300 allowance to send them to Goldinhands for repairs. All but the most recent two Y3's and the four U33/36 diesels have had smoke fan failures. Four engines have needed new receiver boards, two had missing or loose pilot truck bearings plus some other one-off assembly issues, the biggest being poor truck pickup continuity on the SD70ACe's. I just consider that cost as a necessary part of operating S gauge Legacy engines. Agree these should work correctly out of the box but it is not like there is a competitor making compatible command control S gauge engines. Once I get them back from Ed they are good for many years of layout running.

American Models heavyweight passenger cars require modification of all the coupler arms to close couple and look right. Plus, most of them come with two axle trucks so I buy three axle replacement trucks. The AM Budd cars are perfect out of the box.

SHS/MTH and now Scale Trains Freight cars require new AM coupler assemblies at $6/car and 15 minutes of my time, to close couple for proper appearance. How hard would it be to put on the correctly sized coupler arm at the factory? Apparently they figure anyone who cares would just put on Kadee body mounts. All the close coupling modified cars (except the 84' passenger cars) still run on Gilbert 20"R curves, so that is no excuse.

I do not get upset, I just do it and enjoy the trains after the fixes. It is part of being an S gauger.

Tom,

Thanks for the great info! Nicholas Smith has the cars now for 68 each beware some of the car numbers duplicate the AM numbers.

Thanks

Gunny