Electrical "Odds-n-Ends" for Model Railroading Enthusiasts                         

Eureka!  Easy installation of Universal LEDs in MTH Premier cars!

MTH Premier Vista Dome Passenger Car

MTH uses an ingenious combination of metal rails and snap-on mini incandescent lamps to illuminate their Premier cars.  One problem though: the little incandescent bulbs use too much energy just like their bigger brothers causing a huge drain on your transformers (not to mention they are too bright when run at command control voltages)

I've known all along our Universal LED would be perfect for this application but couldn't find a fastener to easily connect to the power rails in the cars.  I also considered our LED-CLD which is jut the PC board to which a series of regular LEDs could be soldered - but most in our hobby prefer not to solder (not my favorite thing either) and look for other solutions.

I was visiting one of my favorite hobby shops, Ready to Roll, when Jim from Jimbo's Custom Painting, who does terrific custom painted engines and also works at Ready to Roll, told me he had been installing our LED-UCs in Premier passenger cars but instead of soldering he just used the sockets that are already there.  Genius!  You also don't need nearly as many LEDs as incandescent bulbs, he said he usually just used two or three per passenger car. 

Now though we many not prefer to solder - we will tinker: disassembling our cars to add passengers and the like, and this process is no harder than that.  Plus you can keep the original bulbs for later reinstallation without damage.  Here's the process.

First of all, opening the Vista Dome Passenger Car:

Simply removing 6 screws easily opens this passenger car.  What did we find - nine incandescent bulbs.  Energy hog!

This picture shows the bulb/socket/metal rail combination.  The bulb is like a smaller version of a Christmas tree lamp:

 Removing the bulb from its base, you can see that it is like a smaller version of a Christmas tree  bulb.         

 I've had to change many bulbs over the years just like this:  straighten the lead and remove.  We're going to do the same thing and use this socket to connect leads from our LED-UC universal LED.

Take a small gauge, single conductor wire and strip the ends.  I used a 22 gauge because that's what I had handy.  Bend to one side a couple of the strands of the wire.  We're going to cut off the remaining wires.  Only a couple strand will fit through the holes of the bulb socket.

Below we've inserted the leads - and just a couple strands of extended wire - through the holes of the sockets and bent them back, just like Christmas tree lights leads.

The other end of the wire was inserted into our LED-UC below:

And then the original socket was reinstalled back on the rail and I tacked the LED-UC in place so it wouldn't move around.

The below picture shows to LED-UCs installed in the upper deck.  Note after I took picture #1 I decided to add a third to the upper level.  Note I installed one LED for the lower level.

So easy a caveman can do it!

Scott

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Last modified: November 08, 2008