Converting Kato lighting from bulbs to LEDs

[craigolio1]

Hey all.

I picked up this set of Amtrak cars…





It’s got 12 Superliners and two of them have tiny depressions on the roof which I immediately suspected could be due to heat from lighting:



I disassembled one and confirmed the presence of Kato lighting kits with bulbs.

Has anyone upgraded these to LEDs? I know I can buy them but the expense would be a waste when I could just use 12 LEDs and resistors.

I know I can just choose an LED, calculate the size and wattage of the resistor and go for it. But I’m curious if anyone else has done it? What size of resistor did you use? Did you add a bridge rectifier (I’m using DCC)? Capacitors?

@peteski designed a constant lighting circuit for me a while back. I’m wondering if I should just cram that in there? 

Thanks. Craig.

[Steveruger45]

Doesn’t Kato make a version 2 of their 11-211 or 11-212 lighting kits that have LED’s?

[peteski]

Yes, I believe that all current Kato passenger car lighting kits are made using LEDs  Currently Ver. 2 is the best one (ses brighter LEDs and revised design of the light diffuser).   I don't think Kato sells any of the incandescent ones anymore.

As Craig mentioned, they use a single LED (light engine), and the diffuser distributing the light over the length of the car.  But some still find it not optimal, and they build their own lighting circuits using inexpensive LED strips, bridge rectifier, resistor (and capacitors to reduce possible flickering). Benefit is that there are multiple LEDs over the car length, so the lighting is more even.

The original incandescent, and also the first generation of Kato light units used a diffuser which was even less useful for evenly distributing the light through the car. I suppose you could reuse the original light diffuser and just replace the bulb with a home-brewed rectifier, resistor and a white LED. 

We had a thread about this about 10 years ago (time sure flies!), and it was actually you Craig!  Do you remember?  You built those light kits using my recommendations, and were quite happy with them.  See https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=29654.0 Less expensive than the Kato units too.

[craigolio1]

Doesn’t Kato make a version 2 of their 11-211 or 11-212 lighting kits that have LED’s?

Yes. I just don’t want to pay for them. Haha

[craigolio1]

Yes, I believe that all current Kato passenger car lighting kits are made using LEDs  Currently Ver. 2 is the best one (ses brighter LEDs and revised design of the light diffuser).   I don't think Kato sells any of the incandescent ones anymore.

As Craig mentioned, they use a single LED (light engine), and the diffuser distributing the light over the length of the car.  But some still find it not optimal, and they build their own lighting circuits using inexpensive LED strips, bridge rectifier, resistor (and capacitors to reduce possible flickering). Benefit is that there are multiple LEDs over the car length, so the lighting is more even.

The original incandescent, and also the first generation of Kato light units used a diffuser which was even less useful for evenly distributing the light through the car. I suppose you could reuse the original light diffuser and just replace the bulb with a home-brewed rectifier, resistor and a white LED. 

We had a thread about this about 10 years ago (time sure flies!), and it was actually you Craig!  Do you remember?  You built those light kits using my recommendations, and were quite happy with them.  See https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=29654.0 Less expensive than the Kato units too.

Yeah that circuit is the one I’m referring to in my thread up top. I’ll probably just use it. It’s works great. And why go through all the effort of cracking open each car and not include constant lighting, right?

For now I’ll remove the lights so no more cars melt. Those two will be easy to fix. It could be much worse!