DCC Impulses Column - 3
and cool operation. Some manufacturers, such as Kato (2), offer
lighting kits with LEDs for their cars.
LED lighting kits don’t use a lot of DCC power or generate a lot
of heat. Since they have long (thousands of hours) life, they
can be left on all the time, reducing the cost by not needing a
decoder per car.
Miniatronics makes a couple of kits which include LEDs, a
power supply and a large storage capacitor (more on this later).
The longer one (475-100ICL01) is aimed at HO- scale passenger
cars and the shorter (3) version (475-100CB201) is aimed at
HO-scale cabeese and N-scale passenger cars. These kits also
include the metal to make power pick-ups for your cars. This
total kit costs about what you’d spend on all the parts, if you
set out to make your own. A real value, for sure.
Power Pick-up
The car that I show outfitted with lights in figure 1 was
purchased for $10 or $15 at a local swap meet. Even though
Bachmann didn’t have lights in it, it had carbon wipers on the
back side of one set of wheels on one truck (4). Notice that
they are spring loaded against the wheels on opposite sides of
the same axle. That keeps the wheels centered in the bolster.
3: Miniatronics generic LED lighting kit
3
MRH-Sep 2013
