Thomas,

Here is one picture of the finished product.

You can see the wrap around band which forms a secure bonding of all the contact clips.
By adding more superglue on top of the contacts, I than but the band, at this stage in a U-form and slide it in over the contacts and hold it there with a pair of plyers for a minute or so.
When it has set, I take another pair of plyers and bend the overhanging band over the top contact and solder it to it.
The idea of another coat of superglue over the contacts is to prevent any electrical contact between the contact strips and the band and by soldering the top contact it doesn't matter if it has contact or not because it is insulated from the other 3 contacts.

You have to be quick and precise when applying the superglue, there is no room for errors otherwise you have to start from the beginning again, take off all the superglue so you finish up again with a clean surface and this prevents the contact strips to gain another gap distance. (coupling to contact strip)

The extended contacts can still slip through to the end covers and do not interfere when the couplers are extended (going through curves)

You may notice the coupling has a black tungue clip on its end.
the original was broken and replaced with this one.
I drilled a very small hole into the coupling and the tungue clip, inserted a thin metal rod and superglued it together.






This is the original part.
The end product to the left, a wire is soldered onto it before it is glued to the coupling.
I also ruffen up the surface for a good bond.

Allmost all cuts are used






Here is the original ICE train coupling.

there is a sparepart for the electrical contact for the coupling, which clips on on each side.



I'm also trying to figure out how I can put an interior light into the motorcar 1.

Having 4 contacts and one of the wire (red) is to carry the current to the function decoder in motor car 2.
The other 3 wires are for the interior lights (common blue wire, white (Aux 1) & yellow (Aux 2).
The function decoder has 4 functions available (Aux 1, Aux 2 Aux 3 and Aux 4, the last 2 with a reduced output.

Aux 3 will power the led in the drivers cab.

My motorcar 1 has at the moment a 60901 decoder in it with 2 Function outputs but would'nt be able to have a drivers cab light in it.

I could install another function decoder and just use one lead from the function decoder (Aux 4) to power the driver cab led or I use the red wire instead (running through the whole train) and connect it to the cab light in drivers cab 1, thus loosing the red wire contact for the function decoder.
By doing this I would have to have both pantos up to get the power for both decoders.
Another option could be, driving the ICE from its pickup shoe, power for the decoder in motor car 1 and activating the switching track (signal module) and having the rear panto in motor car 2 up to power the function decoder, leaving the red wire free and use it for my cab light.




John