MTH HO car lighting

[cold steal]

Does anyone know a source for a replacement light bar for their HO passenger cars?

[gmpullman]

Short answer, no.

Now that MTH has announced their leaving the business I doubt replacement parts will be available, not that MTH ever responded to parts inquiries, anyway.

The Walthers LED light kits are similar but lack the very good "keep alive" capability the MTH bars had. I have since been making my own passenger car lighting using a simple keep alive circuit.

Do you use DCC? ESU offers an LED light bar that can be programmed using its built-in decoder. I've installed a few of these and they are very good, although having a LokProgrammer is helpful for programming them. It has pads where two different types of capacitors can be added for keep alive.

I had always hoped that MTH would make their light bars available as a separate part but that never seemed to be in their marketing interests.

Good Luck, Ed

[Trainman440]

Yea, MTH has nearly stopped responding to part inquries almost entirely. I think its less to do with them shutting down and more to do with covid and lack of representatives. I did eventually get through to them after emailing them twice in november. 

Did your lights inside your MTH cars stop working? Its likely some wire that just broke, Id recommend opening the car up and seeing what's the problem. 

Im not sure how MTH car track pickup works, but if its like Bachmann's (where theres a wire that constantly gets bent back and forth whenever the truck pivots), that's the most common failure point. 

[tstage]

gmpullman

I had always hoped that MTH would make their light bars available as a separate part but that never seemed to be in their marketing interests.

You and me both, Ed.  It's just so superior to the lighting kits that require batteries to flicker-free operation.  I have yet to try the ESU LED light bar but may have to give it a try sometime on my one brass passenger car.

Tom