Kato 11-109 chassis lighting

[Scott1984]

Does any one have any experience with adding an LED light to the Kato 11-109 chassis? I would like to add a working headlight to my 3d printed Hon30 locomotives. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

[ArtinCA]

Not yet. I bought a few chassis and have a 3D printed shell to put on but no lights yet. Evans Designs has lights listed that may work. I got one of their lighthouse lighting kits for the Bar Mills lighthouse kit.  Looks good and has the horn.

[randgust]

I drilled down through the plastic truck frame #80 .012 to insert a removable piece of .010 brass wire held in by friction, contacting the frame halves.

That gave me the frame electrical leads I needed to set up the dropping resistors and the LED's.   And I can simply pull those wires out with tweezers if I have to get the mechanism apart again.

You can't solder to those frame halves, and there's precious little material to put a screw in either.

[Dwight in Toronto]

Does any one have any experience with adding an LED light to the Kato 11-109 chassis? I would like to add a working headlight to my 3d printed Hon30 locomotives. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

I’m guessing that you are working with DC, and not DCC?  I recently added several 0402 LED’s to a Kato 11-108 chassis (headlight in the front, red marker lamp and reversing lights in the rear), but the ESU LokPilot decoder made this easy and straightforward.  I have a few pics of the DCC/LED install, if that’s of any help?

[Lemosteam]

Here's a page that might help to show where pickup and passages could be made:

https://tramfabriek.co.uk/kato-take-a-part.html

[Scott1984]

I drilled down through the plastic truck frame #80 .012 to insert a removable piece of .010 brass wire held in by friction, contacting the frame halves.

That gave me the frame electrical leads I needed to set up the dropping resistors and the LED's.   And I can simply pull those wires out with tweezers if I have to get the mechanism apart again.

You can't solder to those frame halves, and there's precious little material to put a screw in either.

Thanks for the info on this!! I have not been on here for a while, life has been a little busy and the hobby has taken a back seat. Would I need two wires to contact the frame? I am really bad at understanding electronics and how it all works. Thanks again for the help and sorry for the delayed reply. If you have any more information, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!