The Atom Furnace: Lighting BachmanTrain Cars with LEDs

I thought I would memorialize my efforts to get my lighting enhancements to work again. Years ago I had followed another modelers procedure for lighting Bachmann cars. The cars I have were from a "Hawthorn Village" set made by Bachmann. The cars were originally lit by a single incandescent bulb. As you will see the light is powered by the current in the track on which the car runs and the car has a small circuit board that controls the light. This set up is bypassed with the LED rehab. Evans Designs LED chips come with capacitors that control the current to the chips so they will be run just as the original incandescent set up. The Bachmann cars are easily disassembled. The original installation was simple by wiring the LEDs to the existing wire lead. After popping off the car roof and snipping off the existing bulb and the wire lead from the little circuit board you just twist all the LED leads to the internal lead. There are several places within the car frame to attach the lights. The two lights I used for overhead the outside platforms required me to drill holes to insert the lights but that was not difficult.

Here is the reason for this tutorial - yuk! After a few Christmas seasons the lights began to flicker, followed eventually by not lighting at all. At first I thought that the wire lead from the wheels trucks may have broken, which was true in a couple of cases.

This shows how the cars are manufactured. The wire lead into the car is soldered to a copper tab that is attached to the metal wheel truck by the screw then the truck face to the yoke. This solder has broken is a couple of trucks. To repair I discarded the copper, stripped some insulation and twisted the wire around the screw shank. This solved my problem temporarily, but he flickering continued. Before the Christmas season of 2020 I decided to break every thing down. The cars can be disassembled fairly easily and the trucks removed and taken apart.

As seen above the culprit is exposed. Dirt and lint etc. slowly wraps around the axles where they contact the truck face.

Once all the gunk is removed and everything is cleaned the trucks can be reassembled.

The power from the track is transferred to the truck face via wheel/axle. The pointed end of the axle into the truck has to be clean and and in contact so that the power can be transferred to the truck yoke where the wire lead is attached.

With the grime removed the trucks are reassembled, lead attached and truck inserted back into the car floor.

This photo shows the original circuit board to which the lead and incandescent bulb were attached. This is a simple single LED light I added to a more recent ELF passenger car I acquired. The photos that follow show the various stages of rehab that I originally did back in 2017.

All wired in parallel.

Note that the LEDs have been inserted to holes drilled through the frame.

While I had the cars opened up I painted the interiors and added "O" gauge figures. The remaining challenge is to gather the wires together and snapping the roof(s) back on.

Speaking of roofs, I masked the windows and sprayed white so the various cars all had a white roof. These are Christmas train cars.

Cargo pallets I found online are glued down into the cars before the roof is back in place.

A RR worker is added .....

.....along with a jolly Conductor. Passengers are added to some of the seats inside the cars before the wires are gathered together and the roof(s) put back on. Now with the cars on the powered track the passengers can be seen.