Replacing Incandescent with LED in Passenger Cars

Mid America Railcar of St. Louis & Indianapolis fields a fleet of mainline passenger cars, a number of which are used behind NKP 765 on excursions and in other services.  Starting last fall, they have reequipped two cars with LED's and many other upgrades and those are the cars that are in the southwest poised to serve on a LA to Las Vegas service.  They draw about half of the current of incandescant light bulbs.

Bob, i have used both cool and warm white.  Between them, warm looks better.  Haven'tried neutral. 

I'd use the warm white, any of the others look too white for me. 

Has anyone tried this upgrade on weaver passenger cars, specifically the Pullman bradleys

What he said.  I've done Weaver cars, but not that specific model.  Opening them up and putting them back together is the bulk of the work as a rule.

Reading this thread has been quite an education!  Unfortunately I am going to ask a question that is pretty far below the caliber of the current discussion.

 

Q1 Is the primary purpose for changing incandescent to LED to conserve track power for other engines/cars?  Follow up, Q2 if the answer to the previous question is yes then as long as I have track circuits that each of their own power source then the conversion to LED is not really necessary?  (I have 6 180W bricks each dedicated to a power district.)

 

thanks and sorry for dumbing down the conversation

Not dumb. I would say maybe to both questions...but with some added reasons if they are important to you. On the first question, the LEDs will last indefinitely as opposed to incandescent bulbs. And sort of with the second question, the power distribution over your districts will be less lumpy (resistance in the track joiners and voltage changes) if you aren't drawing several amps with bulbs as you go from district to district.

An added advantage is that you can put in a storage device (capacitor) to draw LED sized current when the contact of the pickups is intermittent and the bulbs blink...not to mention the small arcs on the rails which makes the track "dirty". A capacitor for bulb lighting really is not viable because of the current bulbs demand.

Actually, I find that with distributed lighting from LED strips that the lighting looks much more realistic.  I can also easily adjust the intensity to anything I like.  Finally, the reduction of power is dramatic, and if you're running multiple passenger trains that span one power district, it helps a bunch.  Of course, I get flicker-free lighting as well.  For our modular club layout, the LED lighting makes a huge difference when we travel.  IMO, LED lighting is better in every way, it's hard to imagine a benefit of staying with incandescent lighting.

 

 

My primary reason for installing LEDs is to provide much more realistic lighting in a way that is inexpensive, easy and fun to do.

I tend to agree with Bob Shaw.  I find the stock MTH cars with incandescent lighting are evenly & nicely lit, so I haven't bothered changing to LEDs.  Williams cars with their glaring hot spots, I've all changed.

The first of 4 Pullman Bradleys to recieve the conversion to LED's. I used warm white and they look great. Thanks for the tips guys

just about every reliable and  even  some of the cheap  import versions that we use in the sign industry have reverse voltage limiting circuits and diodes built into them.

Otherwise unlike some of the original versions, we would be toasting circuits all the time.

 

We usually only use quality 12vdc power supplies like the one in the photo (probably power an entire O scale city) but are always using wall warts (usually with the jacks cut off) to power mockups. We never check polarity anymore.

The LED strips in the photo are by Sloan. This version is called Bendlux.

They are designed to be used as is or snapped and stretched to about 2 1/2" center to center of the three LED modules.

They claim to have Constant Current Technology (CCT) which is probably the little chip on them.

They can also  be wired in series or parallel. 

The 3M VHB foam tape will never fail if surface is properly prepped with 50-50 Isopropyl/H2O solution.

 

and some are the newer power supplies are variable input from 100-300VAC with no jumpers etc.

FFFREEEDDDD: I note your power supply is 120 VAC input.

That's what most line circuits are these days.
Unless you are using a 277vac leg off a 480 3 phase.


What do you think you plug your 18vac output transformers into?
I was not advocating sticking into a passenger car. Lol

I think this thread was addressing LEDs in rolling stock.

Then read my entire post.

The LEDs I suggested are sone of the best for Warm White color rendition and consistency than those cheap Chinese ones.

As long as you don't mind spending tons of money to offer what is likely a very small, if any, improvement!

 

Hi John,
I think we had this discussion before. Since then, like all computers and phones, due to technology, competition and market demand the cost of quality LED lighting strips has come way down in the sign industry.
Also the batching had greatly improved the consistency.
Used to be that the color temp between batches was so different to be noticeably visible.
Now you need a light meter.
To each their own.
I still run TMCC and think that Legacy is not worth the added expense.
I know you feel different.
But I have been using LEDs for about 20 years and remember paying $30-40 a foot for the equivalent of those Chinese ones.
Look into the options and pricing and you might change you mind.
And the new ones are much more forgiving off cheap power supplys

I get excellent results with those "cheap Chinese LED strips", and I can't imagine these offering me any noticeable increase in light quality.  As I have said before, I do each car for about $2.50-3.00 in materials.  Since it would be the same effort to install much more expensive lighting for no gain that I can discern, I can't see the point.

 

I do find it amusing that you don't think Legacy is worth the added expense, yet you'd advocate spending a lot more on lighting that would really bring nothing to the party!

 

As you say, To each their own.

I put little to no stock in "pre-wired", as you still have to connect them to the pickups.  You also have to do 90% of the conversion work in any case, that's taking the car apart and putting it back together. 

 

You're getting nine LED's for more money, where in a typical 18" car I get 21 or 24 for nice even lighting.  Whatever floats your boat, I think I'll stick to my method.

 

 

 

kj356.  There is a picture at the link, along w/ full specs.  Appears to have everything except the choke.  See also the thread "Lights sucked all the voltage out of my transformer" where there is a picture of my home-built units, on which the choke is visible.

 

You must set the output voltage by turning an adjustment screw. 3 amp rating.  Price drops if you order more than 1 lot of 5.

 

It will be several weeks before I cn get to a project to use them

rjr, what is the uF value of the input capacitor next to the bridge?

 

One possible variation for rolling stock lighting is to add (if needed) more capacitance for flicker reduction.

Since four components do this job to perfection, I'm somewhat baffled by wanting a much larger component that could be difficult to hide in the passenger car to do the same job.  The LED's need a very small fraction of the current this supply can provide, you're killing gnats with a sledgehammer.  If you have to add the choke and added capacitance anyway, where's the labor saving? 

 

These are great little supplies that RJR found, but I don't see them as ideal for this particular job.

 

 

 

Stan, there is a 470 uf capacitor on input and on output.  On the units I made up, I used one 470.  So no added capacitor should be needed.

 

GRJ, you are correct that this unit is larger than needed.  However, many people don't want to make these up, and the 3-amp capacity means they can also be used for incandescents, or for large stations or

You could probably light the whole string of passenger cars with those.

 

3 amp capacity can service a lot of LEDs.

 

I could have used one of these when I put LEDs in my main passenger terminal.  Two 5-6' strips and a lot in the main building.  I built a larger power supply for that.

 

One could also use one or more of these devices to have voltage-regulated DC power feed(s) running around the layout for lighting in buildings.

 

Well, that's how "real" trains do it!  Some O-gauge passenger car sets come with a baggage car (that is, no windows) where a single-power supply could be hidden.  Tethers would daisy-chain the LED power to each car.  I discussed this in the following thread.

 

https://ogrforum.com/t...match-lionel-and-mth

 

Yes, the chore of adding tethers would be a show-stopper for most guys but to each his own. eBay now has tiny RF remote control modules for a few dollars.  So, by using a common passenger car power-supply, one could slave all the passenger car lights so they go on/off when, say, the engine's interior light goes on/off.

Since I can do the individual passenger cars for a couple of bucks, and adding tethers would be not only more expensive, but a lot more work than what I do, it seems somewhat pointless to me.  It would be cool to have control of the lighting remotely, but not cool enough for me to go to all that extra work and expense.

If the cars are close coupled with painted diaphragms, the tether wouldn't be seen anyway

On corners, the diaphragms don't line up all that well and you'd see the wires hanging out, at least on O72 curves.  I've already been down that road.

 

GRJ, in the spirit of your puff/chuff board, would you consider making a small, say, 1 sq. inch. PCB that has the choke, bridge/diode, cap, some regulator, AND a screwdriver-adjustable brightness control that drives these 12V LED strips?  I know you're an advocate of the CL2 but perhaps with some clever PCB geometry you can have it support a CL2 and/or a voltage regulator chip where a 20 cent trimpot can set the brightness.

 

Yes, it's so easy for me to say since I'm imagining YOU doing the work but this topic of DIY LED strip lighting comes up so often that I've got to believe you'd become a folk-hero if you offered something like this and a reasonable price...

 

I doubt that GRJ is willing to work for Chinese wages.  $2.80 +/- per board, including shipping from China.  Even less for other types of CV boards.

Well, I don't want to go off the rails into a discussion about Chinese wages, but Wikipedia says China is #2 in number of billionaires (and millionaires for that matter).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L..._dollar_billionaires

 

I only suggest GRJ since I believe he's working on another circuit that he plans to offer which will improve the hobby.  He can speak for himself but seems to me he's doing it more as a public service than to make money.

 

Probably want to connect the regulator as a current regulator with the adjustable trimpot. Maybe 5 to 20 ma or so range

I think if here were a board to be made, I'd probably want to do like Chuck suggests and make it a variable intensity model with a small pot.  It would be pretty easy to design and layout, the trick is getting it built for low enough cost to make it attractive.  The Super Chuffer is a bit different in that that's more value added and it's also a bit more complicated to justify it's cost.

 

It's an interesting thought, and if I could figure out how to do it cheaply, it might be a nice little device.  It could probably be about 1/2" x 1" or so.  I would imagine I'd consider variable regulator with a pot to adjust the current.  The trick is having a regulator that won't get too hot with whatever the maximum current we might be demanding of it.  I've already learned some lessons on my first little project.