Hello,
I bought a few weeks ago three"Silver Coins" four-axle passenger cars, one of them a driving trailer. In Germany, this type is called "Hasenkasten" or translated "rabbit box".
These are old 24cm metal waggons without interior. But hey, the price was cheap and I like them. So I planned to install head lights and interior lights. Of course, the head light should be able to switch from white to red and it shozld be done with LED technique, to reduce power consumption, the light should be switchable by a function decoder and a buffer capacitor should prevent the light from flickering.

Here are some first pictures!

This picture shows the original existing fibre optics, able to control white and red signals separetly! Well done, Märklin!



The white head lights have only very small diameters, the red lights are very big. This is correct!



The white head light LEDs are mounted on the upper side. I used three LEDs, one shining to the left, one to the top and one to the right into the fibre optics:



The interior light is realized with a self adhesive LED stripe, the function decoder is bonded into the roof, too.



First check of the LED head lights:



... and of the LED rear lights:



... and finally the interior lights:



As You can see, the LED lights have small connectors, to be able to disconnect the roof from the chassis.

Edited by user 19 March 2015 08:29:10(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Dan,
Here I used an Uhlenbrock 76900 but I have also good experience with tams FD-R and FD-R Extended.

Both can be buffered with a capacitor, that's very important for me.

The Uhlenbrock is a bit unfriendly, because you need a bulb or motor on AUX1 to be able to program it. If there is only a LED with high resistor value, you can't program the decoder! I used today a 220 Ohm resistor on AUX1 parallel to the head light LEDs.

Moritz

Hi Moritz

I got inspired by your work
So I started to test myself with the same or similair LED-strip, connected to the track (1 kOhm resistor), but it flickers.

What is value/measurement of your capacitor and how did you connect it?
I would be grateful if you could give me some details.

Picture of my simple test (the TEE-wagon still has ordinary bulbs). The LEDs are a bit blue/white, but fixing that will be after "flicker-free project"



Thanks
Håkan

They are actually warm white. I bought the LED-strip at Kjell & Co in Sweden, but here is a link to the same strip: LED-strip
I have already reduced the current, but of course, I can try reduce it more. But I doubt that this will make it less white

Thanks
Håkan

THANK YOU very much Moritz, exactly the info I needed.
Now I'll attack my workbench