A short time ago, we decided to
dress up a couple of our display cases at the shop with some LED lights. This
sent me on a search for available light sources that could work on a common
wall adapter.
A quick search later and I came up with 1000mm white LED
strips, self adhesive back, with resistors built in-line and could run off
6-12V power source. Perfect. We ordered a few extra, and hung them on the
shelf.
That day, one of our long time G Scale customers, Gary
Anderson, came in the store, and he saw the new lights in our display case. He
asked about the possibility of lighting up a set of 3 passenger cars he had
from LGB. After some brief discussion, we came up with a plan to light up his
cars. The main points of the job were as follows:
Light Strip Location
Independent,
switched lighting circuit for each car
Run
off of a common 9V battery
Easy
to switch batteries when they die &
Keep
wiring circuit hidden from plain view
So I set out to make it happen. After gathering the necessary
supplies, which included toggle switches, 9V battery connectors, wire, small
connectors, and of course the light strips, I started to come up with a plan to
install the components.
Switch under Awning
Hidden Switch blends right in
I started by deciding on a location for the switch. I found
some very small black slider switches, which would be easy to hide. I had
initially planned on putting the switch under the car on the bottom of the
chassis to keep it out of site. However, I ran into a couple of issues. The
floor was too thick to put the small switch through, and it would be difficult
to effectively hide the wiring coming from the switch. So I noticed that in the
awning mould on the roof there was enough space to house the switch, and hide
excess wiring. After a small amount of work with the dremel tool, I had a slot
in the underside of the awning just big enough for the slider of the switch to
fit through, and barely noticeable unless you know it was there.
Battery Location
Next was a place to hide the 9V battery. The original plan
was to try and hide it on the floor near the back of the car. I thought that
would be somewhat impractical, as I would now have to hide more wire running to
the top of the car. I noticed there was a fair amount of room on the top of the
roof (on the inside of course) and thought it would be the perfect location for
the battery. It turned out I was right. The battery simply attaches with a
piece of Velcro to the top of the roof.
All tied together
To tie everything together I soldered the battery connector
negative wire to the light strip negative, but then I thought about having the
roof fully removable as the original car was designed. So I simply ran 2 wires
off the switch, and attached a 2 pin JST
terminal commonly used in electric model aircraft, then the positive off the
battery connector, and the light strip positive got the other end of the JST
Terminal. Now the battery/light circuit could be disconnected from the switch
for any future maintenance.
With all the wiring done, and all pieces in place, I
re-assembled the car, and flipped the switch. The LED strip came on as
expected, really looked the part, and the system was hidden from plain view.
And the best part of all, it’s easy to remove the roof, access the battery and
change when necessary.
Lights off
Lights on
This was a really fun project, and a great challenge in
problem solving. Gary is pleased
with the results, and now I’m finding more projects to light up.
