Make Your Lionel Passenger Cars Stand Out: Cheap And Easy LED Lighting!

And hello again! This is Mike with another episode of Toy Train Tips and Tricks. And this is a Lionel 027 passenger car, a post-war version, and I have been customizing it this week. And let me tell you all of the troubles that I have run into, the unexpected problems. We'll talk about the decoration in a different video. Believe me, Murphy's Law is a thing, and Murphy has been extremely active this week as I've been trying to make this particular video. So here we have the 027. This is the observation car, and these 027 streamlined cars typically come in the less expensive Lionel passenger sets, and they go all the way back to the 1940s. Usually the thing that gets the attention of the set is the power, whether it's an old 2020 Turbine, or a 2025 K4, or a Jeep 7, or a U36, RS3, or just about anything. Lionel has put on the front end of power for these, but other than interior illumination, there hasn't been a lot of other exciting things about the cars themselves. And to me, the two parts of the train that most viewers watch are, of course, the locomotive and the rear, the caboose of the freight train, and the observation car of the passenger train. So I was thinking of ways of sprucing up, of adding some more wow factor to this observation car, and the obvious thing that came to mind was adding marker lights to the molded in parts here, where it shows where lights should be. And with today's LED technology, this is becoming an easier and cheaper project than it ever has been. So to go from this plain Jane car to this becomes very easy and rather inexpensive using today's LED technology. So that's what we're going to focus on today. Now first, for the regular interior car illumination, you can choose to leave the original lighting system in place. Now I have a collection of five cars in this set, and they are all different eras from post-war all the way up to modern, and each of those different eras has different lighting. And so to make the lighting more consistent across the entire set, I decided to replace all of them with a standard LED bulb. In this case, a 12-volt BA9 bayonet mount bulb. The reason for the bayonet mount is this particular post-war car and another one just like in the set already have bayonet mounts, so I just reused those. And it was a matter of replacing the Christmas tree light mount type in the more modern cars with new BA9 sockets so that everything can use the same bulb and it matches. Now again, I said these are 12-volt LEDs, but they will operate on AC or DC power. What actually happens is on AC power is that the bulb will actually go on and off, but it will happen at 60 hertz in phase with the AC current, which is too fast for our human eyes to pick up. Although it may annoy some houseflies in the area because they apparently can see faster than we can. These will also operate for short time periods on up to 14 volts with no problems, so on conventional power, as long as you're not Casey Jones running at Mach 8, these bulbs will last you a long time. Now if you are a command operator and your track is receiving that constant 16 to 18 volts necessary for the command signal, you will either need to add resistors to drop the current down or find a different type of bulb or use a different type of system to control your voltage output, which we will talk about here in just a moment. For the marker lights on the side, these openings are roughly three millimeters. This comes in a 50 pack, three millimeter LEDs, and they are pre-wired. They have a resistor already in the wiring to make these LEDs operate safely at 12 volts DC. 12 volts DC just like those white bulbs there. So in theory you could operate them the same way as those running off of track power. I'm going to do something a little bit different with these, and you'll see why here in a moment. Red for positive, black for negative, you're all set and ready to go with these. And if you want to push the LEDs further out of the housing, you might need to bore the hole a little bit more. I like them, you know, as is where it's kind of recessed in there. I like that effect a little bit better, so I left it as is. Now in the real world, these two lights, these marker lights, would almost always show a red indication when they are lit, showing that this is the end of a train. So any train coming up from behind would see the two marker lights and know, hey, I'm approaching the rear end of a train, stopped or moving, but it's the rear end of a train in front of me. Now this upper light, which Lionel often will include a clear lens so that in theory at least it is lit from the interior bulbs, and you get a little bit of light through that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This opening is a little bit bigger. This is closer to five millimeters. And here I have a very similar pack. This is also a 50 pack. These are also 12 volt LEDs pre-wired with the resistor and with the flashing circuit already installed, so you don't have to do anything with that. Just like the others, we have the long leads with the black and the red already attached. Very simple to wire. You don't have to add any other resistors. You don't have to add any diodes to make them flash. It all comes together, all contained in the bulb. Very convenient. So now our concern is how do we get that AC voltage, that variable AC voltage, to put out a rather constant 12 volt DC for our flashing light and for our marker lights? And the answer to that is this component, this small component right here. Now in the old days, and even in some of my earlier videos, I would create a constant voltage circuit using my own components. I would put in a bridge rectifier to change the AC to DC, and then using resistors and capacitors, I would make a nice constant voltage circuit, solder it all together, put it on a board, and insert it. And while it was not very expensive, it was very time consuming, and depending on your skill with a soldering gun, mine's not all that great, it could be a problem. So enter in this component right here that I found on Amazon. This board has a built-in bridge rectifier, it has built-in capacitors and resistors, and it has handy screw terminals done for you. This particular one can accept input voltages between 0 and 40 volts, either AC or DC, and the output is variable. It's adjustable, anything from 3 volts DC, enough to power a single LED, all the way up to 5 volts, 12 volts, or even higher. But yes, 12 volt DC output, continuously, and all you have to do is attach the proper wires to the proper screw terminals. Depending on your setup with your pickups and how you do it, you may not have to solder anything. And because your output on this is that 12 volts DC, yes, if you're using command and you want to change your interior lighting to this 12 volt circuit and not have to worry about overheating and overloading, you can wire that onto this same board just by adding the wires for your lights to this instead of the existing car wiring. So let's take a look at how it's done. Run a wire from your center rail pickup, you know that's the one that feeds the two interior bulbs, to one of the AC input screw terminals on the board. These are marked AC underneath the board. It does not matter which of the two terminals you connect, because it's going to be rectified anyway. The other AC input terminal will connect to your outside rail pickup, or in this case, with this post-war car, to a connection anywhere on the metal frame. I added a machine screw and nut to an unused hole in the frame to make my ground connection. On your three LEDs, bundle all of the red wires together and attach them to the VO plus, or voltage output positive, screw connection on the board. Again, this is marked on the bottom of the board. Similarly, bundle the black wires together and attach them to the other connection, which is the voltage output negative, or VO minus. Before applying power, make sure your board is insulated from the car frame. In the case of this metal post-war frame, I'm adding double-sided foam weatherstripping tape to insulate my board from the metal frame. Plastic cars? Not such a big deal. To adjust the output voltage, turn the small screw on top of the blue rectangular component on the board. Start by turning it counterclockwise to the lowest voltage setting. Then, while powered, slowly turn the screw clockwise until the bulbs display optimally. Use a voltmeter to get the circuit as close to that 12 volts as possible. Oh, and don't forget the wires for your interior lights. And so now we've reached the part of the video where normally I would show you the car running on the layout behind a train and to show off all the fine work and to help you imagine how it would look on your layout. But the, whether you call them gremlins or bugs or just Murphy's law, has continued to the point with this video that now there's a mysterious short circuit on my layout and I can't run anything right now. I'm sure as soon as this video is published it will magically disappear and everything will be fine. It has been that kind of week. Something about this video, somebody, somewhere did not want this particular video made and has put every stumbling block you can imagine in the way. So I can't show you, show it to you running on the layout. We'll have to be content with it flashing away right here in front of us. So in any case, I hope this is inspired you to try this project for your layout. And as soon as this is published, I will go back and try to get my trains running again and hopefully yours still are. So keep those trains running and we'll catch you next time with more toy train tips and tricks. Lionel Express, all aboard!