Big Blue has inspired some purchases

[TMo]

The day finally arrived.  LEDs from China showed up in my mailbox this morning, and I had an hour this evening to take apart the incandescent circuits and install 3-mm LEDs and 1000 Ohm resistors.  I got the warm white variety installed to the wiring harness with plenty of shrink tube - had to extend a couple of wires since the LEDs weren't wired with extensions - you know, the usual fun with decoder wiring harnesses.

   

Anyway, I am happy to report that I got good directional lighting with the body off of the chassis - both forward and reverse lights look great in warm white and a short test drive confirmed that the motor circuits were fine too.  I'm trying a new idea for securing the lighting wires to the body to ensure the LEDs don't migrate out of the brass tubing that holds the lighting in the correct orientation on each end.

Command decorating clips - you may have used these before to hang up decorations on doors or walls - they're a plastic hook secured by a special piece of double-sided tape that you can pull down to release the clip from the door or wall.  I was actually hunting around for small plastic wire tie holders that I mount to the top of the shell and then I was going to run a small wire tie around each set of directional lighting from the decoder when I found these Command clips.  Stuck some silicone on the bottom of each mount and adhered them to the shell (front and rear).  I think I can just slide the lighting wires up under each hook without needing a wire tie and that should keep each LED in place.  I'm letting the silicone set up tonight and I'll try installing the wires by sliding them under the hooks tomorrow.

   

If that goes well and I can get the shell reattached to the chassis, this girl could be on the layout later this week.