LEDs into a DCC Ready Eurostar

[Augustus Caesar]

Well, I thought, as a friend asked me to put LEDs into his Eurostar... that shouldn't be too difficult. And once I got the little lights and decoder plus all the wiring I thought I needed I proceeded to get on with the job.

 

I began with the dummy car to discover that on the bogie there were no pickups. However, the body had the holes for 3mm red and white LEDs just to push in place and fairly tight they were too when trying the fitting out. The roof light which also offered light to the cab window was less amenable with no such hole to slide any LED into it.

 

Now, did I mention no pickups? I proceeded to cut the wires on the LEDs so they were shorter and to solder a resistor to each negative leg of said LED. No problems there. Cutting the rest of the wires in colours to match the decoder wires when they should be attached I thought I was being SO sensible and clever and good and all that... and once done I covered said soldering links with heat shrink tubing. Oh I am good... well I FELT good! :-)

 

On looking at the bogie I discovered on the dummy car that no pickups were available to connect said wires to and I now felt like screaming!!! RIGHT... I thought!! What do I do now? Ah, let's try the motor side... aha... connectors!

 

OK, so all soldering is done and now just to attach the wires to said decoder on the socket (on this Eurostar the decoder socket can be unscrewed from the chassis and the wiring soldered to the underside of it). SO, what does one do? One finds the colours for the front white lights and connects wires as required and the same is done for the red. Feeling very confident in a job well done I placed said loco on track.

 

Now to test lights... Forward lights came on as red... hmmm... rear lights as white. Loco ran backwards! Odd. So I tried reversing loco on CV 29 thinking that is unlikely to work but I thought I would try it. It didn't work! Loco didn't reverse as it should have. I restarted RM and this time tried again. No luck... loco reversed running but LEDs STILL lit up incorrectly.

 

What now? Ah... desolder white and yellow wires from the decoder socket and reverse them. Yes! But loco still went the wrong way. So, try CV 29 again... this time absolute success!!

 

So my friend now has the right sequence for the motor side of the Eurostar but I now need pickups for the dummy.

 

Peter's Spares sells a full bogie for around £8 or so with pickups and I will suggest that to my friend. It does have the connectors as it is taken from a motorised car.

 

One question folks... if I didn't go for that bogie just what do you all suggest for being the best way to have wheel pickups for LEDs connected to a decoder (Hornby 4 function - yes I know it may over the top for just LEDs but bare with me).

 

I know of the spring type and another I have seen is shaped like an 'H' but I have no idea how that one works.

 

We await with the greatest anticipation for your answers to this one. Any help is appreciated as always guys! The simplest fitting with the least amount of alteration or fiddly work will suffice but any knowledge will be utilised somehow... even later on for another job! Thanks...

[RDS]

I know I am not answering your question but £8 to solve your problem sounds a reasonable deal to me. I would go for the bogie with pickups.

[Augustus Caesar]

I know I am not answering your question but £8 to solve your problem sounds a reasonable deal to me. I would go for the bogie with pickups.

 

Hi RDS... thanks for your reply. I looked at PS site and discovered he sold out of the ones he had, namely the bogie described... however, I noted New Modellers Shop had one and the postage was cheaper. I have now ordered that so thanks again. This will fulfill my friend's order.

 

It was future reference that I wished to find pickups for a stack of things like different locos and coaches which would be made ready for LED inclusion which in turn would be run via a decoder so I would not have batteries running them or permanently on lights. The same shop has some pickups which are very useful like Class, 37, 43, 90, 91 and 101 types so at least I can get started on all these. It looks as though these were specifically built for hese locos which is great but generic ones could also prove useful. So if yourself, or anyone else can help then that would be great too.

 

What disappoints me really is that some of these things would have been included on the Tube as working examples and how to's. There is little on this and what there is merely covers how to wire LEDs to a resistor, use surface mounted LEDs for coaches and when someone actually did do one video he wired the things up and got them working but when duplicating his method the LEDs worked but were the wrong way round... hence my hassle above! This was not a hardship and I am not criticising the guy in any way because it worked for him and at least he did a video! My version had to be different though.

 

Anyway, I am sure I will perservere and may just do my own vids as tutorials for this kind of stuff. LED usage is becoming more common and adds so much to the layout. I have a unit that adds lights to buildings but they turn off at randome times thus emulating people actually doing this for real. It's brilliant and at £34 was a bargain. If anyone wants to know where I got this I will post a link - which may be moderated but I will give it a shot...