Hello, I am a newbie to Marklin and have some questions. I have the first phase of my track complete and looking to add signals and such. Looking to add the 74470 turnout lanterns to my turnouts which have the turnout mechanism and 74461 decoder. I was reading is a previous discussion from 2011 that the brown and yellow wire can be connected directly to the C-track for power, is this the case or is there a different way these need to be connected? Unfortunately the instructions with the lanterns or the Marklin wiring architecture does not help me much for this.

Also, what voltage do the LED street lights (72813 for example) operate at. I was looking to use a 120V to 3.3V 2.5Amp plug-in transformer for this, have had success with this transformer for other LED modeling projects.

Lastly if anyone knows a good location for help with Marklin wiring that would be great. I saw they are supposed to have a new wiring book out this year but not sure if it has been released yet.

Thanks for any help.

Probably Graham HO was assuming you're running an analogue set up.

For digital you can connect the lights directly to the track, they have a rectifier in them, but I don't know how they like the reversing pulse from a Marklin AC transformer. However, for digital, if you have a lot of T/O lights you may want to consider an accessory transformer, so as not to rob your trains of traction power. Again that depends on what sort of Controller your using and it's power output as to what the ideal answer is

As for your street lamps I think your transformer you mentioned may have to low an output but it won't hurt to try. These lamps have bulbs not LEDs, and are designed to work at 12-16v

Knowing what your Controller is will help in getting the correct advice

Thanks for the help. I am using the MS2 and at this point in my layout I am only looking at 6 turnout lanterns.

Joe, welcome to the forum!

I have all my turnout lanterns powered from track power. There is over 20 of them and no problems at all. I use CS2 controller 60214. Like David wrote LED's don't draw much current. For other layout lights I have a separate transformer. All my Märklin Hobby series signals are powered with third separate transformer as they and their control boxes need that special IR (infra red) receiver equipped track piece powered with it's own transformer.

Cheers,
Janne