Intermountain full dome

[trainforfun]

Hi
would like to find an exploded drawing view of the car , wrote to IM but no luck up to now .
There was none in the  box .
Found a magic wand to open the lights inside , worked 2 days at the beginning but not anymore , wonder if there is batteries or an electronic system that is charged by the rails .
Can't find any explanation on their site ... 

[nickelplate759]

By the way, I've noticed that every time my Intermountain dome goes past a magnetic uncoupler installation (permanent magnets alongside the track) the lights turn on or off.  Really annoying!    I need to open it up and remove the batteries....

[trainforfun]

The lights on mine are so weak that I would not notice that !

[C855B]

It's a completely battery-powered system. I haven't located the battery yet, but it's going to be a button cell or maybe two. I do have to wonder how long it will last in infrequent use. My biggest "problem" is keeping track of the wand. Last time I saw it, it was while gathering up empty rolling stock jewel boxes into a tote to clear up some shelf space. I hope I can find it again. You know how that goes, although I have magnets everywhere around the room if necessary.

I pulled the trucks off yesterday for painting. Black trucks with yellow & gray MILW? - for shame!    I looked at what would be involved to convert to track power and am weighing whether it would be worth the effort. Since I'm running it in a MILW consist with an FP45 on the point rather than a sort of guest foobie in my City of Everywhere trainset, for the time being probably not.

[peteski]

What i see described here is exactly why I do not like self-contained battery powered lights in N scale cars.  All this trouble, and at some point in time batteries will leak out their caustic electrolyte, and make a mess.  Not for me.

I'm surprised that there is not an instruction sheet somewhere in the jewel box with instructions on how  to change those damn batteries.

[trainforfun]

I hope will eventually sell their full dome as a separate car . This one and the solarium tail end car .
These are soon coming in a train set for CN .

[Nato]

                  I have had mixed luck with the lighting on IM Centralia cars. Pull out the little tab sticking out one end door. The the lights are suppose to work with the wand. On some cars I have had them work, they are at a nice not too bright level, but on about 70% of the cars I own the lights do not work after carefully pulling out the tab. If I wasn't afraid of damaging the roofs I would remove them to see if the battery is inserted  or seated correctly. The cars from Rapido with a similar system come with the battery in the box, you have to remove the roof and install. Again fear of damaging the roof  has kept most of my CN and Via cars in the dark. I agree with Peteski track powered lighting is better, the clunky looking Bachmann smoothsided and fluted cars with their truck pickup lighting are far better.              Nate Goodman (Nato).   

[kscessandriver]

Intermountain has a how to on their website on replacing the batteries on the older Centralia Car Shops releases, which is straight forward to do. For the full length domes, it's somewhat similar, but not exactly the same. The entire dome piece is held in by a couple of clips, you should be able to just get it to pry off with a little bit of force. Once that's off, the interior comes out in similar fashion, at which point you'll find the 2 batteries, held in the lower portion of the car, attached to the bottom of the interior piece.

There was a thread a few months back when these came out, I just can't find it off hand, but it may have better directions and/or pictures of what I described.