Constant Voltage Directional Lighting

[bomber]

My KLine Club Trainmaster Diesel has directional lighting and horn. Unless the voltage is over 8.5 VAC, the horn sounds puny and the directional lighting is very dim. Can I add capacitors or diodes to hold the voltage above 8.5? Did Classic Toy Trains run an article on this in the past few years? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Cousin Bruce

[Roger Bielen]

Hi Bruce,

What you want to do for the lighting is described in "Easy Electronics Projects for Toy Trains", David E. Greenwald, Kalmbach Books. Its probably advertised in CTT. They have a section on "Constant-Intensity Lighting" that describes a couple of different situations. The one your interested in does use a capacitor, diode, and constant voltage regulator.

I've found this book to have some useful ideas that I've used variations on some projects on my layout, i.e. replacing batteries for accessoried with DC voltage supplies I put together.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

If you wire the motors in series the horn and lights will get more power for a given speed. The motor will also perform better at low speeds.

Dale H