Crafting CPR’s ‘Sandford Fleming’ Theatre Car in N Scale

[craigolio1]

That's a great idea, harvesting from old cables. 

If you are bundling a couple of strands together on one LED, use thin wire (magnet wire or a single strand of speaker wire) to wrap them together.  Then one bundled, heat the ends all at once.  This will polish the ends and they will sort of blend together.  If you do them individually and then bundle the, the little mush room shapes on the end of each fiber will prevent them being pulled together and the LED might be less intense on the outside fibers.

Craig

[Dwight in Toronto]

I’m relieved to say that two replacement ESU digital light strips were finally delivered.  I sent the faulty ones back on December 12, so roughly 6 weeks turnaround.  USPS tracking revealed 30 individual stops/waypoints, the majority of them being hops, skips and jumps up and down California.

I’ve resumed the task of fitting one of the light boards into the coach, and should have a few final updates and pics over the next few days.

[Dwight in Toronto]

Here is an ESU digital light strip, shortened in length so as to fit within the N scale coach.  The section with the last five LED’s had to be zipped off with my Dremel:




At the right end of the pic is a small connector that plugs into a receptacle in the coach, which conveys track power to the strip decoder.  This enables me to remove the strip if required.

The left side of the pic shows the four 0402 LED’s that will illuminate the lamps along the top edge of the rear fascia.  The two outer-most LED’s are for the right & left marker lamps, while the two inner LED’s are for the rear spot/flood lights.  On the inside rear of the coach itself, the black-painted styrene tubes into which the four LED’s will be inserted are visible.  The fibre optic material at the bottom of the photo is what I’m thinking of using for the back-up/reverse lamps that are on each side of the rear coupler.

The next photo is a close-up of the LED connections to the light strip.  The device comes with two red 3mm LED’s already soldered to the end of the board as directional rear lights.  I removed those, soldered the white 0402’s in their place, and configured the decoder so that the markers will be lit whenever the loco headlight is on, irrespective of loco direction. 




There is one spare AUX output on the board, and I used this to power the floodlamp LED’s.  You can see a small pc strip with a single 1.8K smd resistor CA’d to the side of the board, and a blue +ve jumper wire.  I’ll use function mapping so that the spot lights can simply be toggled on or off.

There are two remaining solder pads, which are intended to accomodate an additional LED for forward illumination in cab applications.  I’m thinking of using this output for a white LED that would illuminate the optic fibres for the rear right & left backup lamps, which would come on only when the loco is reversing.

Here’s hoping that the preceding drivel makes some sense!

[BCR 570]

Great work here, Dwight!  I will have to look into one of those light strips for my official car on my museum train.

Tim

[Dwight in Toronto]

Having installed the ESU digital light strip, I’m nearing the end of this build. 

Here’s a pic showing the rear marker lamps illuminated.  By putting the coach in consist with the locomotive, these lamps come on whenever the loco headlight is on.  It’s too bad that my iPad camera doesn’t do a better job of capturing the distinct red and green lenses - the effect is much nicer to the naked eye:




Next, here’s the two floodlights/spotlights lit up.  These are just toggled on & off via F6:




Finally, here’s a photo showing the interior coach lighting:




Note that the interior lights are arranged in three individually controllable banks.  F3 illuminates 3 led’s in the tiered seating area, F4 lights up two more in the mid section, and F5 toggles a single led in the front end of the coach (which gives the impression that a washroom light, say, has been turned on).  Alternatively, F2 toggles all three banks on and off simultaneously.  Playing around with the three arrangements is more fun and interesting than I thought it would be.

The strip decoder has numerous special effects to choose from, such as gradual glow-up to simulate a generator coming on, slow dimming on shutdown, and various incandescent and fluorescent effects.  I thought it rather funny that several options incorporate various flickering patterns … modelers go to great lengths with capacitors and whatnot to eliminate coach lamp flickering, and here we are, able to add it right back in with a bit of programming!

On that note, I have to say that I’m very impressed that my model has absolutely no flicker whatsoever.  The light strip includes a small amount of capacitance, and there are two sets of solder pads should someone wish to add either an ESU powerkeeper or an additional capacitor, but in my case neither one is needed.

I’ll try to put together a short video clip to better demonstrate the lighting features.

[craigolio1]

Wow that’s awesome!  I don’t know this light strip was a thing until I followed this build. I can see a couple of uses for it, starting with my model of CN business car 93, which has rear marker lights, rear inspection lights, rear porch ceiling lights, wall sconces, and lounge table lamps.

Craig.

[BCR 570]

Nice work!

Tim

[Dwight in Toronto]

Wow that’s awesome!  I don’t know this light strip was a thing until I followed this build. I can see a couple of uses for it, starting with my model of CN business car 93, which has rear marker lights, rear inspection lights, rear porch ceiling lights, wall sconces, and lounge table lamps.

Craig.

Craig - it’s worth picking one up, even just to experiment with it on the bench.  As I mentioned, there are several spare solder pads available (one set has the resistor “built in” for an LED, the other needs a resistor added).  Also, one could always remove some of the factory LED’s from their fixed positions on the strip, solder wire leads in their place, and reposition/extend quite a few additional LED’s for any number of interesting lighting features.

In one of the other topics, I posted the following link to a favourite little hobby shop of mine:

https://www.thescuderia46.com/product-category/digital/lights/?filters=brand%5B1151%5D

That’s where I got the digital light strips, but I’ve purchased A LOT of various ESU products from him over the last few years. 


Tim - it’s only in the last 12 months that I ventured into scratch building … an interest that was instigated by your comprehensive build threads … so your good word means a lot.

Thanks guys.

I’ve made a short video, and will include it later today.

[Dwight in Toronto]

As promised, here’s a hastily made, 3 minute iPad video.  Once the steam loco (and FP9A-assisted) train rolls by, the focus is on the Sandford Fleming lighting features.

The first effect is illumination of the red & green side markers - they are small, and the amount of light is subtle, but I really like them.  Next, the three banks of interior coach led’s are lit up one after the other, and then the bright floodlights are illuminated.  As the train rounds the bend at the end of the video, I shut down the spotlights and the coach lamps, and then show how all three interior banks can be turned on with a single F-button.

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The only thing I have yet to work on is trying to use fibre optic material to light up the backup/reversing lamps that are on each side of the rear coupler.  I’m kinda sitting on the fence over this, as I’m tempted to leave well enough alone.  But, I’m always willing to try and learn new techniques, so we’ll see. 

Oh, and some day I will indeed replace the ‘napolean hat’ trucks with more prototypical units!

[peteski]

Very nice Dwight!  The interior lights seem a bit on the bright side, but that is quite common thing in model trains (as they need to be visible even in brightly lit room).

As for the backup lights, can't you just use 0402 prewired LEDs in small custom made housings?  Evergreen sells black styrene sheets which is opaque.  Just cut small housing out of some thicker (like 0.040") sheet and drill a hole in them to house the LED.

[Dwight in Toronto]

Hey Peter - I’m glad that you’re still following the build.

Re: the bright lights … I neglected to mention that the ESU digital light strips also come with an adjustable/variable resistor that can be turned up/down with a jewellers screwdriver to fine-tune the brightness.  I haven’t played with that yet, but it would do the trick.  Pete, you really have to get yourself one of these slick little devices and play around with it!

Re: the back-up lamps - I do indeed have black Evergreen styrene as you describe, so I’ll give it a look and further explore your suggestion.  As you’ve seen, I’ve already used four 0402’s for the lights above the big picture window, and I demonstrated how I insert them into short styrene “retaining tubes” so that they can be snugged up to the coach lenses.  Once the LED’s are in place, I affix them by squeezing a tiny bit of sticky-tac over the wires at the tube openings; in this way the LED’s are not tethered to the shell, and can easily be removed if need be, and the tac re-used.

There is not enough space under the floor of the coach to mount the same type of LED retaining tubes, so that negates using the above-described “tetherless” technique.  And I don’t want to permanently affix 0402’s on either side of the coupler, because they, of course, need to be soldered to the light strip at the other end, which effectively tethers the light strip to the subframe … something I have thus far been able to avoid. 

Hence, I’m thinking of using CA to glue two optic fibres to the bottom inside edges of the frame, running from the lamp lenses, along either side of the rear truck, and then bringing them together and entering the coach somewhere behind the rear truck.  If I can heat-bend the fibre to a near vertical orientation so that it comes up through the floor within the centre portion of the coach (ie - somewhere behind the tiered seating platform), my idea is to then solder a bright white 3mm LED to the last remaining AUX pads on the light strip, and configure it so as to be positioned directly above the fibre optic termination.  I envision equipping the 3mm LED with a shroud of black heat shrink tubing which would slip over and envelop the fibre optic ends, thereby containing, directing and restricting the light to the exposed fibre.  Since the LED and the fibre are only “opto-coupled” by proximity, the light strip remains untethered from the coach frame.

Does any of the preceding drivel make any sense?  It’s all just conjecture and wishful daydreaming on my part at the moment, but I hope I’ve been able to convey my design concept.

As always, I am forever and always amicable to alternative approaches!

[peteski]

Sure I'm following your build thread Dwigth - it is quite interesting.

I bought one of those ESU lighting strips - just haven't found a time slot on my workbench to do the dissection. 

Plastic fiber optics can be heat-bent (I think I mentioned that earlier in this thread), but be careful using CA with plastic fiber optics. I experienced the CA glue making the fiber brittle and crack.  Use epoxy glue instead.

As far as the problem tethering the LEDs in the frame, why not use a connector which can be disconnected when the shell is removed. Or use springy home made contacts like I have used in several of my models? For example of a triple tetherless contacts see https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=38297.0