I'm going nuts building my layout, and am finding that building the town and villages is as much fun as laying out the tracks and trains.

I will soon have about 50 buildings and numerous streets.

What's the best way to install lighting?

I bought at the Pullman store in Paris 5 little LED bulbs, each I think with two wires. The guy looked at me in disbelief when I asked how to wire them.

Can you help? I'm a complete idiot when it comes to Marklin wiring. I plan to buy more when I figure out how this works. I want street lights, building lights, the works.

I have 2 little 7211 control boxes and one 7210. How do you collect all those wires and then run them into the control boxes? Then how do the control boxes attach to a transformer?

Is there a limit has to how many lights can be run out of one transformer?

Can someone show me a diagram how how the wiring should work with so many lights? A REALLY simple diagram?

With many thanks

Peter

Led lights is the way to go, they don't get as hot as ordinary bulbs, they use less wattage and can be brighter if needed., the last longer., any light bulb needs to wires a plus and a minus and this is most the time displayed on a coulor scheme, brown and red. or brown and yellow.

John

start here:

http://]https://cabin-layout.mixmox.com/2017/04/led-lighting-circuits.html


It answers some fundamentals about the wiring, and explains how many you can connect at a time, as well as providing some simple diagrams.

LEDs have to wired with correct polarity.

Twisting wires will just give you frustration, you should solder them.

To help reading the link, your Märklin transformer produces 16V AC.
You may also want to buy a cheap DC power supply for all your LED lights. Look for 12V DC power supplies on Amazon.

I also have a section on building lighting at: https://cabin-layout.mix...ilding-plastic-kits.html

Unfortunately not to my knowledge, you may can buy certain components in 1 shop but not as a kit where all the components are offered at the same time., what you will find the moment you get used to it its like ABC afterwards. with leds its like people standing together in a row and holding hands, 1 hand is negative and the other positive., some basic soldering skills, maybe resistors to drop down the voltage and some suppliers supply led's with resistors., with led's as mentioned before you have to take notice of the polarity but this again is child's play, as one wire rod is longer than the other and all you have to remember which is which.

John

Have a look at Marklin 72090. Get two and also a supply of their plugs. Put a plug on each light. One Yellow and one brown. You can then plug ten buildings into the 72090. Then you take a wire from the 72090 to a transformer. You can continue with more 72090 and join them together thus only taking two wires to the transformer. That is a very easy way to start and you cant really go wrong. As I said before use Faller bulbs with their kits as the kits are mainly ready with a place to accept their bulb.
I always say take it slow and the easy way first then you can experiment later. IF you do the above and still get stuck then PM me and I will help.

Attach a photo of one of the LEDs you already have, and that will help us give correct advice on what you already have.

Nowadays there are a lot of very good, inexpensive LED streetlights, etc on EBay. They are from China (I know) and run on 3 volts, so you need a separate power supply, or use a step down transformer from 12v to 3v, also available on Ebay. One trick that I have found is brilliant to light bigger models such as stations and platforms are the LED copper wire strip lights, they use the super thin wire and the LED's are incorporated into the wire. You can run the wire wherever you want, it's easy to hide. You simply disconnect the battery holder (or use it if you like) and connect the lights to a power supply.

The Marklin lights are very expensive and to me look somewhat out of scale. The less expensive lights on eBay are very simple to install, far more affordable and look to scale. To get your light to stand straight, you will most probably have to use a construction adhesive....just put the wires into the hole first, then a dab of the adhesive and push the post in. Brace it until the glue sets.

It's great what you can achieve with a bit of lateral thinking....this is a very expensive hobby so if you can do something well and inexpensively, that's very satisfying.

the HO ones are also very good. I bought a 12V to 3V mini transformer on eBay, I simply hook it up to the blue Marklin lighting transformer and it works a treat. Another very inexpensive option are the LED Christmas lights, you can string them along a tunnel and they give off a soft glow, looks really realistic.