Coach Lighting Part 5 “Mainline” coach

 

12/01/2025

Coach Lighting Part 5 Mainline coaches  coach

Let’s make a start coach lights to Mainline coaches .

First off Mainline coaches differ significantly from Lima in so much as Lima coaches have the glazing is part of the roof section. First off I cut a strip of 1 millimetre plastic card 252 millimetres long. On the underside of the roof you can see 3 rectangular mouldings drill a hole in the plastic strip corresponding to the position of the rectangular mouldings, this is to enable liquid glue to penetrate and bond the strip to those mouldings. The strip will be used to mount the LED strip. From here on the rest of the conversion is the similar to the Lima conversion

On the underside of the roof you can see 3 rectangular mouldings which correspond to where the holes I drilled in the plastic strip.

13/01/2025

Another set of wheels modified to have live axles springs fitted 32 awg fly leads soldered them, and by removing some of the plastic on the washroom end of the carriage will allow me to fit 2 16 Volt / 1500 microfarad capacitors to stop the lights flickering. Connection the capacitors in parallel will give me 3000 microfarads of storage I find it’s easier this way rather than using one large capacitor. Also I’ve reduced the value of the resistor on the input to the bridge rectifier from 3K to 1k. With a 3K resistor the light little bit too dim with the lights on in the room with1K resistor this gives sufficient light for you to be able to see lights on and see the interior of the coach.

14/01/2025

A productive day today retrofitted 1K resistors to the previous conversions and finished Mainline coach.

First off was fit 2x 1500 microfarad in parallel I attach the bridge rectifier to the side of one of the capacitors using hot glue into the modified washroom area. I have used 30 awg silicon wire and 32 awg wire from the pick up springs to the bridge rectifier.