Help ... Let there be light !

[eja]

Looking for help here.  I want to convert a Kato SD-40 to a nose headlight (like a CP unit)..  I think I am up to the challenge of cutting and installing as Sunrise ( N636) headlight.  However, I have no idea how to get it to be a functioning headlight.   

Can any of you experts help me out ?

Thanks

EDIT:   This is an N scale project.

[John]

I have not done this .. but ..

I would drill a small hole in the headlight fixture, then run a light pipe to the existing headlight ..

[John]

I have not done this .. but ..

I would drill a small hole in the headlight fixture, then run a light pipe to the existing headlight ..

[Mile 1]

Are you modeling in HO or N?  In Ho Miniatures by Eric makes a pre-drilled casting for the low-nose headlights.  It's easy to run a pair of grain-of-rice bulbs from there back to your decoder or the truck leads, depending on how you're running your engines.  You will need a resistor to knock the voltage down from track power to about 3V.

[nscalesteve]

Looking for help here.  I want to convert a Kato SD-40 to a nose headlight (like a CP unit)..  I think I am up to the challenge of cutting and installing as Sunrise ( N636) headlight.  However, I have no idea how to get it to be a functioning headlight. 

I've solved this with surface mounted (SMD) LEDs as you can see on this picture...


(wow, this picture is already 3 years old now, nowadays I'm using much smaller LEDs...)
for CP rail engines the LED on the right drive is too low, it has to be more up like on the left drive...

and yes, the Sunrise part is a good choose...

 

and for the lenses you can use the cut of lenses from the original glazing part (done on this CN/GTW unit...) or you can use fibre optics. (done on the CP Rail Express unit...)


(somehow I've improfed the details over the last three years...) 

I've made a simple description for pilot mounted ditchlights on my website... http://www.nscalecorner.com/noselights.html

[diezmon]

I've solved this with surface mounted (SMD) LEDs as you can see on this picture...

What kind of resistor you got in there steve?

Tim

[bsoplinger]

What kind of resistor you got in there steve?

I'm not Steve but I stayed in a Motel 8 (or whatever chain had those stupid commercials) 

It looks like he wired them directly to the same leads on the light board as the LED headlights so no resistor would be needed.

If you're going to wire them to a DCC function output you'll want to get some SMD resistors. Ngineering packages them and they're available from Walthers (I think they are new to Walthers this year so aren't in the catalog but are online so you can get the numbers for your local hobby shop that way).

http://www.ngineering.com/accessories.htm

[cr6841]

i model the CP in HO scale, and have used a double-jacket fiber-optic line running from the LED housed in shrink-wrap tubing to the MBE headlight casting. it worked out very well. the sunrise kits are good, but the mbe casting is supposedly a "true" canadian headlight, since it is a deeper casting for the canadian winters. like their ditch lights with the snow-guards on them. that's what i was told, but they both look identical in steve's pics. that cp looks sweet, steve! love that detailing! my "fiber-optic" cp sd40 can be seen at www.katousa.com (customer photo gallery-matt arentzen)

matt a.
northeastrailworks.com