Light Install

[OBJack]

Interesting Jack. I have never seen anybody install these before. Do you think they would work in a caboose, using 1 light?

Loren

Loren, I see no reason why not. The L.E.D.s are hooked up in parallel, so 1 light or 10 lights should make no difference. In fact the kit that I got had a few white and red L.E.D.s for exactly that, and as I said before, depending on the brightness of the light required you can of course use a resistor... or not.
The output of the flicker free (capacitor?) is 4.5 ~4.7 v, input of 9 ~ 20volts AC, DC, or DCC, and it can store up to 200,000 microfarads ( whatever they are)
And it draws very little current, and needs about 2 to 3 minutes on the track to reach full storage capacity.I installed one carriage with a 1000 ohm resistor ( and the light was just visible in the dark, nicely subdued, like it probably should be ) I did the next one without a resistor, so it is noticeable in daylight and I think the third one I do will have a 500 ohm resistor installed, so I can see the difference.

Next thing was to get the pickups installed on the axles.

But I found the wheels on both side were isolated from the axle, hence no power flowing thru the axle to be picked up by the little springs supplied with the kit.

plan B...

Cut a #5 kadee coupler centering spring plate .....

..... in half and glue to the underside of the bogey with the spring against the wheel to act as wipers
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then solder the two wires to each pick up and.... voila
The Dude that welded the wires ( and melted the bogey! :geek: ) No longer works here.

The first one I did with four leds and a resistor for a very subdued light, the second one had no resistor and 6 lights which makes for a bit of light seen during daylight running hours

6 lights & no resistor