Excellant, and getting those roofs off is a real bugger. I think that one time I had to "push" something UP through the bottom(small area next to the white bulb holder on the bottom.) Here caution is still the word, go slow. I have a Milwaukee Road and Southern Set that I had to do this for.
This is a great video with some awesome lighting tips. Wish I would have seen this one sooner. I’m going to have to come back and watch it again when I redo my cars.
The passenger coaches look great! The led’s appear to create a fluorescent light effect in the cars. Could you build some kind of “stay alive circuit to help prevent the flickering? The markers were a real nice touch as well. I’ll have to look into them for my On30 coaches and cabooses. Thanks roe sharing.
Thanks John, the LEDs are dimmer than they appear in the video. My camera adjusted to the darkness making them brighter than they appear. To make the LEDs flicker free, I purchased 10,0000 microfarad 25 VDC capacitors that I can install parallel on my DC output. That value should be large enough to keep the lights on on a brief dead spot
Thanks Warren. In my description, I have a downloadable picture of the AC to 12V regulated DC power supply. The electronics I got from Amazon and they are the flat bridge rectifier, the 7812 voltage regulator and a 1000 microfarad capacitor. You could go with 10,000 microfarads for a flicker free operation.
@@warrensmith6 I would stick with a warmer color depending on the style of passenger cars. If it's a style like these Crescent cars, warm is good like they have lanterns as their light source. A newer style car like Amtrak cars you can go a little cooler, but that's my opinion.
Great little DIY project, the finished project reflects your goal, which looks nice. Personally, I would abstain from modification of these cars keeping it all original. ( That's what floats my boat) Nice mod though, enjoy your cars..
Just found your channel. I have to say this is top 10 if not top 5 work. Ohm's LAW LIVES!!!! Great job setting the bar for others to follow! I now have new goals for lighting. Awesome job.
How about just an LED strip and a variable register in series (with the proper polarity), crank it to a brightness you like and done? Do you need to rectify it? Won't it still light with 1/2 the wave form? A capacitor should work as well. The LED has rectified the circuit. Love your observation lanterns, brilliant !! (pun intended)
You can do a variable resistor with the LED strip. The LEDs should light with 1/2 the wave form, but the manufacturers have their spec. No harm in trying. I haven't seen an LED strip that had a rectifier in it or rectified the power, mostly current limiting resistors to control power in the circuit. If you apply AC power down the strip, AC power will be present at the end of the strip. All LEDs are in parallel with the power supply from what I've seen. If a polarized capacitor is introduced to an AC system, the capacitor will get damaged (may fizzle or pop like a fire cracker). I rectify mine for the controlled brightness and non flickering operation, but I need to add a 25 volt 10,000 microfarad capacitor to my power supply to make that happen. The other benefit of a rectified circuit is if you add a lower voltage LED system, the passenger cars will light up brighter on lower transformer voltages.
@@TheCreativeMind I shouldn't have said that the led's rectify the current. Actually they clip one half the sign wave. This results in a pulsing DC half sign wave. The pulsing is not noticeable but can charge a capacitor. It's behavior is very DC like. I'll post again once I've tried it. Cheers, again, great job.
This is an exceptional video. I have basically the same set in the Milwaukee Road livery and I also have the flickering light problem. Now, thanks to your tutorial, if I want to, I can fix that issue and, now I know how to improve the lighting on the observation car. Thank you.
Would it be possible to add a capacitor or something to create continuous lighting that would withstand the momentary outages caused by track switches or dirty track? The capacitor (or whatever) would act like a small limited-capacity battery and keep the LED lights glowing continually, instead of flickering when the cars go over the switches? I know just enough about electronics to dream up stuff like this but not enough smarts to know if what I’ve dreamed up is even possible…😉
Hello Brian, yes a large value capacitor will work but keep the capacitors rated voltage low. Besides the value the rated voltage will also increase its size. Also paralleling capacitors will help
I would like to add LEDs to NM thps1 Burlington zephyr. When I hook up the two LED wires to the transformer they light just fine. I installed a pickup roller to the trucks. Where would the other wire go?
@@TheCreativeMind The wiring for the zephyr is odd and I am electrically challenged. Each passenger car has a tether to the next car. One set of wheels and trucks per car! No pickup rollers so I installed my own. As stated, if I wire the LEDs to my transformer they work fine but I can only connect one wire to the roller. If I touch the second wire to any other metal on the car, nothing happens. Old cars with lamps work fine if you touch one wire to the roller and the other ire to a metal part like a wheel.
@josephpolanin182 I had to look up a Zephyr and see how it was wired. I see the tether between the cars and you have a pick up roller installed where the LED is located. First see where the tethered wire is hooked up at. If there's 2 color wires you can tell where the power wire and ground wire is connected. The ground is usually on a motor frame or locomotive frame. See how this wire is going into the connector and follow that wire to the car where your LED is at. If your LED is connected to your new center roller, connect the other wire to the ground wire by the connecter by gently scraping away the insulation and soldering the new wire to the ground wire. Hope this helps
@@TheCreativeMind I have taken 6 photos of my project but do not see a way to send them on RUclips. There are only 2 wires coming from the LEDs. I have one on the roller but cannot place the second one due to the configuration of the trucks. As an added bonus, the observation car has a pickup roller and a place for both wires from the lamps.
I always change out the incandescent lighting for LED strip lighting. I also use a mini full wave bridge rectifier along with a 3200uF capacitor for flicker free non-directional lighting. I also run all my Lionel trains on DC power. Also if you use bright white LED's you'll need to paint the individual LED's with some yellow acrylic paint. The bright white lights just don't look correct according to the wife so I painted them. I also use single LED's for the engine front light. Of course you'll have to use a ballast (current limiting) resistor. I usually use a 220 ohm dropping (ballast) resistor for all my LED's except for the strip lighting 'cause they have the resistors built in. W Rusty Lane K9POW in eastern Tennessee
This is a great video! However I can not tell how & where you reattached the resistor for the marker lights. Do you have a diagram or picture that illustrates this process.
I didn't include it in the video, my camera couldn't focus on the work area. I just cut the resistor off the LED wire, push the wire through and glue the lantern to the body and solder the resistor back onto where I cut it from the LED wire. I also wrapped the resistor and it's solder joints in heat shrink tube to dress it up and to prevent shorting. Hope this helps
How did you get all those Crescent Limited cars to stay together? The plastic couplings are not very robust. I have one of these cars with droopy couplers that dont line up with mating couplers. I am still trying to figure out how to fix this.
I had a few of these couplers sag and recently 2 more were sagging on me. I did a short on its repair. One of the repairs I forgot to post. ruclips.net/user/shortsekCwQVDUhxQ?si=jw0upBcnhFEbl3mO
I guess your method would work on trucks that have a pickup roller assembly to hold down the dearth vader helmet. I used a 4" black cable tie and wrapped it tightly around the pivot point to pinch the dearth vader helmet down on to the pivot hub so that the tang is straight and swivels freely. So far, this has worked. I also used this same method on the truck with the pickup roller assembly.
Why not put the lights at the bottom? Then you wouldn't have to mess with a wire. It doesn't look like you can tell where they were mounted once it is all put togetther.
I thought of that but I wanted to keep the lighting mounts for the incandescent bulbs. If i moved the LEDs to either side of the passenger car with the power supply to the opposite side of the LEDs, the one set windows would be brighter and a shadow may be cast on the other windows from the electronic parts. I could have reconfigured the power supply to lay flat but I was happy with this. Thanks for watching.
Do you run constant voltage, or do you use a transformer? I want to do this to several different sets, but I use a zw275 transformer. I'm trying to figure out how to get constant (or near constant) brightness using my zw275 transformer.
@inscoredbz I use conventional the majority of the time. Doing the retro fit to LEDs with a power supply will maximize lighting brightness even at lower voltages where a traditional locomotive can "creep" on the tracks. Check out my 783 Hudson video. Toward the end I retro fit the Headlamp with an LED and I compare it to the incandescent passenger cars, big difference.
Great information! I have been a Lionel collector since before the 50's and still at it. Believe it or not I never had this set until only a few weeks ago. I am very squeamish about making permanent changes to any equipment so drilling holes for marker lights is probably.not my bag, but I do have an S scale drum head that I would like to add from Tomar industries. I would love your thoughts on adding that to the observation. I chose S scale because the railing on the MPC observations is smaller than true O scale. Bruce Schrimpf
Hey Bruce, so that's what those emblems on the back of the cars are called. OK, I checked out the drum head from Tomar and from what the illustration shows it has a wire coming out the middle back of the emblem. First I would mock it up on the back of the car to see how it looks. Run the wire under the platform of the observation car and see if there's any pinch points. If so I would use a small drill bit to ream a chase on the platform so the wire sits comfortably. If you want you can add a piece of heat shrink tube (don't heat it up) as a protector. Check to see if you have to extend the wire to your power source and come through the hole, for the interior lighting, with your wires. Tape or hot glue the wires under the observation car.. If all looks good with the drum head, I would dab some hot glue on the back of the drum head to adhere it to the railing.
@@TheCreativeMind PS: The National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin has one of the most complete collections of railroad drum heads around. They were not all round. Some were square and some, like Pennsy, were in strange shapes, like a keystone.
I have wanted to add tiny led light to some of my Lionel Standard Gauge engines and cars. I do not really understand led's, more specific: why can't you just buy leds that run on 12 to 18 volts and just add them in/on with prewar type bulb fixtures? I know there are leds in car dashes etc. that's 12 volts. I would want to have OBS cars have leds behind the plastic lenses, red & green leds on cowcatchers. I can grasp the concept of volts, mostly Amps, Ohms NO, resisters NO. I am just too old school.
Hey Michael, hopefully I can help you out with your question. LEDs are diodes that light up and their operation depends on their manufacturing. There are LEDs that run on AC voltage, DC voltage, and both AC or DC voltages. Placing a DC LED on an AC circuit can damage the diode. When they're made they have a set voltage of operation unless they have a regulator built into the LED so they can operate at a range of voltages. However when we want to add LEDs to our models we may have to fabricate/purchase a power supply that will handle them. Resistors restrict current and/or create voltage drops to control the brightness of the LED like a dimmer switch in your house or bring the LED to proper operating volrage. I would like to find a generic LED that I can add to my trains but besides price, the LED lens may be too tall, the light is focused straight instead of all around and color. An example of this I bought (4) 14 VAC LED bulbs for my 1122 switch tracks. Wasn't what I expected. The lens was too long it restricted the lantern from being installed and the light was focused straight. It was $18 gone. But it doesn't mean the right LED isn't out there. Hope this helps out.
To add an on/off switch with existing LEDs in passenger cars? I'm sure it's possible but the interior will yield the kind of switch used. Which car were you thinking about?
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Excellent video my friend
Excellant, and getting those roofs off is a real bugger. I think that one time I had to "push" something UP through the bottom(small area next to the white bulb holder on the bottom.)
Here caution is still the word, go slow. I have a Milwaukee Road and Southern Set that I had to do this for.
Looks Amazing Ed!
I could listen to you talk all day , even though I have no idea what you’re talking about
Thank you
Very clever. Great job explaining.
Thank you
This is a great video with some awesome lighting tips. Wish I would have seen this one sooner. I’m going to have to come back and watch it again when I redo my cars.
Thanks Dave. Seems when I do videos like this they are always longer than I anticipated.
@@TheCreativeMind longer or not, you provided a lot of really helpful information and tips.
The passenger coaches look great! The led’s appear to create a fluorescent light effect in the cars. Could you build some kind of “stay alive circuit to help prevent the flickering? The markers were a real nice touch as well. I’ll have to look into them for my On30 coaches and cabooses. Thanks roe sharing.
Thanks John, the LEDs are dimmer than they appear in the video. My camera adjusted to the darkness making them brighter than they appear. To make the LEDs flicker free, I purchased 10,0000 microfarad 25 VDC capacitors that I can install parallel on my DC output. That value should be large enough to keep the lights on on a brief dead spot
Love the idea. How to I make or buy the regulated DC power supply?
Thanks Warren. In my description, I have a downloadable picture of the AC to 12V regulated DC power supply. The electronics I got from Amazon and they are the flat bridge rectifier, the 7812 voltage regulator and a 1000 microfarad capacitor. You could go with 10,000 microfarads for a flicker free operation.
@@TheCreativeMind Thank You. The 3000K LED strips are out of stock. Would you recommend cooler, warmer, or hold out for 3000K?
@@warrensmith6 I would stick with a warmer color depending on the style of passenger cars. If it's a style like these Crescent cars, warm is good like they have lanterns as their light source. A newer style car like Amtrak cars you can go a little cooler, but that's my opinion.
Great little DIY project, the finished project reflects your goal, which looks nice.
Personally, I would abstain from modification of these cars keeping it all original. ( That's what floats my boat)
Nice mod though, enjoy your cars..
Thank you David
GREAT JOB Thanks
Just found your channel. I have to say this is top 10 if not top 5 work. Ohm's LAW LIVES!!!! Great job setting the bar for others to follow! I now have new goals for lighting. Awesome job.
Thank you Clint. Wow top 5 that's awesome!
How about just an LED strip and a variable register in series (with the proper polarity), crank it to a brightness you like and done?
Do you need to rectify it? Won't it still light with 1/2 the wave form?
A capacitor should work as well. The LED has rectified the circuit.
Love your observation lanterns, brilliant !! (pun intended)
You can do a variable resistor with the LED strip. The LEDs should light with 1/2 the wave form, but the manufacturers have their spec. No harm in trying. I haven't seen an LED strip that had a rectifier in it or rectified the power, mostly current limiting resistors to control power in the circuit. If you apply AC power down the strip, AC power will be present at the end of the strip. All LEDs are in parallel with the power supply from what I've seen. If a polarized capacitor is introduced to an AC system, the capacitor will get damaged (may fizzle or pop like a fire cracker). I rectify mine for the controlled brightness and non flickering operation, but I need to add a 25 volt 10,000 microfarad capacitor to my power supply to make that happen. The other benefit of a rectified circuit is if you add a lower voltage LED system, the passenger cars will light up brighter on lower transformer voltages.
@@TheCreativeMind I shouldn't have said that the led's rectify the current. Actually they clip one half the sign wave. This results in a pulsing DC half sign wave. The pulsing is not noticeable but can charge a capacitor. It's behavior is very DC like. I'll post again once I've tried it. Cheers, again, great job.
This is an exceptional video. I have basically the same set in the Milwaukee Road livery and I also have the flickering light problem. Now, thanks to your tutorial, if I want to, I can fix that issue and, now I know how to improve the lighting on the observation car. Thank you.
Great tip on the lanterns.
I have to get some of them. They look great.
Thank you
Nice job.I have always loved MPC and to see someone doing the kind of work you are doing is amazing.
Love your videos! You inspire me to upgrade my vintage Lionel Trains!
Would it be possible to add a capacitor or something to create continuous lighting that would withstand the momentary outages caused by track switches or dirty track? The capacitor (or whatever) would act like a small limited-capacity battery and keep the LED lights glowing continually, instead of flickering when the cars go over the switches? I know just enough about electronics to dream up stuff like this but not enough smarts to know if what I’ve dreamed up is even possible…😉
Hello Brian, yes a large value capacitor will work but keep the capacitors rated voltage low. Besides the value the rated voltage will also increase its size. Also paralleling capacitors will help
10,000 microfarads should do it
It looks like you should've added a capacitor to each car due to flickering ? 😊
I would like to add LEDs to NM thps1 Burlington zephyr. When I hook up the two LED wires to the transformer they light just fine. I installed a pickup roller to the trucks. Where would the other wire go?
Does the Zephyr have a grounding truck? That's your second wire location. Which LEDs are you using? Are they a set voltage?
@@TheCreativeMind The wiring for the zephyr is odd and I am electrically challenged. Each passenger car has a tether to the next car. One set of wheels and trucks per car! No pickup rollers so I installed my own. As stated, if I wire the LEDs to my transformer they work fine but I can only connect one wire to the roller. If I touch the second wire to any other metal on the car, nothing happens. Old cars with lamps work fine if you touch one wire to the roller and the other ire to a metal part like a wheel.
@josephpolanin182 I had to look up a Zephyr and see how it was wired. I see the tether between the cars and you have a pick up roller installed where the LED is located. First see where the tethered wire is hooked up at. If there's 2 color wires you can tell where the power wire and ground wire is connected. The ground is usually on a motor frame or locomotive frame. See how this wire is going into the connector and follow that wire to the car where your LED is at. If your LED is connected to your new center roller, connect the other wire to the ground wire by the connecter by gently scraping away the insulation and soldering the new wire to the ground wire. Hope this helps
@@TheCreativeMind I have taken 6 photos of my project but do not see a way to send them on RUclips. There are only 2 wires coming from the LEDs. I have one on the roller but cannot place the second one due to the configuration of the trucks. As an added bonus, the observation car has a pickup roller and a place for both wires from the lamps.
I always change out the incandescent lighting for LED strip lighting. I also use a mini full wave bridge rectifier along with a 3200uF capacitor for flicker free non-directional lighting. I also run all my Lionel trains on DC power. Also if you use bright white LED's you'll need to paint the individual LED's with some yellow acrylic paint. The bright white lights just don't look correct according to the wife so I painted them. I also use single LED's for the engine front light. Of course you'll have to use a ballast (current limiting) resistor. I usually use a 220 ohm dropping (ballast) resistor for all my LED's except for the strip lighting 'cause they have the resistors built in. W Rusty Lane K9POW in eastern Tennessee
This is a great video! However I can not tell how & where you reattached the resistor for the marker lights. Do you have a diagram or picture that illustrates this process.
I didn't include it in the video, my camera couldn't focus on the work area. I just cut the resistor off the LED wire, push the wire through and glue the lantern to the body and solder the resistor back onto where I cut it from the LED wire. I also wrapped the resistor and it's solder joints in heat shrink tube to dress it up and to prevent shorting. Hope this helps
How did you get all those Crescent Limited cars to stay together? The plastic couplings are not very robust. I have one of these cars with droopy couplers that dont line up with mating couplers. I am still trying to figure out how to fix this.
I had a few of these couplers sag and recently 2 more were sagging on me. I did a short on its repair. One of the repairs I forgot to post.
ruclips.net/user/shortsekCwQVDUhxQ?si=jw0upBcnhFEbl3mO
I guess your method would work on trucks that have a pickup roller assembly to hold down the dearth vader helmet. I used a 4" black cable tie and wrapped it tightly around the pivot point to pinch the dearth vader helmet down on to the pivot hub so that the tang is straight and swivels freely. So far, this has worked. I also used this same method on the truck with the pickup roller assembly.
Why not put the lights at the bottom? Then you wouldn't have to mess with a wire. It doesn't look like you can tell where they were mounted once it is all put togetther.
I thought of that but I wanted to keep the lighting mounts for the incandescent bulbs. If i moved the LEDs to either side of the passenger car with the power supply to the opposite side of the LEDs, the one set windows would be brighter and a shadow may be cast on the other windows from the electronic parts. I could have reconfigured the power supply to lay flat but I was happy with this. Thanks for watching.
Do you run constant voltage, or do you use a transformer? I want to do this to several different sets, but I use a zw275 transformer. I'm trying to figure out how to get constant (or near constant) brightness using my zw275 transformer.
@inscoredbz I use conventional the majority of the time. Doing the retro fit to LEDs with a power supply will maximize lighting brightness even at lower voltages where a traditional locomotive can "creep" on the tracks. Check out my 783 Hudson video. Toward the end I retro fit the Headlamp with an LED and I compare it to the incandescent passenger cars, big difference.
Great information! I have been a Lionel collector since before the 50's and still at it. Believe it or not I never had this set until only a few weeks ago. I am very squeamish about making permanent changes to any equipment so drilling holes for marker lights is probably.not my bag, but I do have an S scale drum head that I would like to add from Tomar industries. I would love your thoughts on adding that to the observation. I chose S scale because the railing on the MPC observations is smaller than true O scale. Bruce Schrimpf
Hey Bruce, so that's what those emblems on the back of the cars are called. OK, I checked out the drum head from Tomar and from what the illustration shows it has a wire coming out the middle back of the emblem. First I would mock it up on the back of the car to see how it looks. Run the wire under the platform of the observation car and see if there's any pinch points. If so I would use a small drill bit to ream a chase on the platform so the wire sits comfortably. If you want you can add a piece of heat shrink tube (don't heat it up) as a protector. Check to see if you have to extend the wire to your power source and come through the hole, for the interior lighting, with your wires. Tape or hot glue the wires under the observation car.. If all looks good with the drum head, I would dab some hot glue on the back of the drum head to adhere it to the railing.
@@TheCreativeMindThanks. I will study your reply carefully before I do anything! I will probably gave more questions before I start.
@@TheCreativeMind PS: The National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin has one of the most complete collections of railroad drum heads around. They were not all round. Some were square and some, like Pennsy, were in strange shapes, like a keystone.
I have wanted to add tiny led light to some of my Lionel Standard Gauge engines and cars. I do not really understand led's, more specific: why can't you just buy leds that run on 12 to 18 volts and just add them in/on with prewar type bulb fixtures? I know there are leds in car dashes etc. that's 12 volts. I would want to have OBS cars have leds behind the plastic lenses, red & green leds on cowcatchers. I can grasp the concept of volts, mostly Amps, Ohms NO, resisters NO. I am just too old school.
Hey Michael, hopefully I can help you out with your question. LEDs are diodes that light up and their operation depends on their manufacturing. There are LEDs that run on AC voltage, DC voltage, and both AC or DC voltages. Placing a DC LED on an AC circuit can damage the diode. When they're made they have a set voltage of operation unless they have a regulator built into the LED so they can operate at a range of voltages. However when we want to add LEDs to our models we may have to fabricate/purchase a power supply that will handle them. Resistors restrict current and/or create voltage drops to control the brightness of the LED like a dimmer switch in your house or bring the LED to proper operating volrage. I would like to find a generic LED that I can add to my trains but besides price, the LED lens may be too tall, the light is focused straight instead of all around and color. An example of this I bought (4) 14 VAC LED bulbs for my 1122 switch tracks. Wasn't what I expected. The lens was too long it restricted the lantern from being installed and the light was focused straight. It was $18 gone. But it doesn't mean the right LED isn't out there. Hope this helps out.
just curious, would you know if pulling the top off of a LIONEL BALTIMORE & OHIO PASSENGER CAR IS THE SAME WAY?
If it's from the MPC era and is the same design as these passenger cars, then yes. But still look for any screws on the bottom or by the doors.
Could you do a LED switch on passenger cars that have interiors
To add an on/off switch with existing LEDs in passenger cars? I'm sure it's possible but the interior will yield the kind of switch used. Which car were you thinking about?