For lighting experts (passenger cars)

[Southwest Chief]

Amtrak's Superliners have very noticeable brake/door indication lights on the sides of the cars near the entrance doors.  Currently the lights show green and amber aspects.  In the early days a third, white, aspect would light for brake test applications.  The white light was removed before the Superliner II's arrived beginning in the mid 1990s. 

Here are two links I found online that best show the lights:

Amber Light

Green Light

What I haven't been able to find is the right solution to model these lights on say a Walthers Superliner.  I've looked into bulbs but all are way too big.  Then I looked into LED's and while some are super small like this (scroll down to colored Nano's) it's a surface mount and is unlikely to look right mounted on the end of a small tube, and may still be too big.

Then I looked into fiber optics but they cannot be bent as severely as I think I need.  What I initially thought of doing was gluing two small tubes on the side of the Superliner.  Then drill small holes in the tubes on the side attached to the Superliner to feed fiber optics into the tube.  But there would have to be two per tube and an almost 90 degree bend that would surely kink the fiber.  I'd have to bend it this severely as the light source has to be inside the car.  But these lights are not like markers on the end of a car, these are on the side but still are parallel to the body of the car.

Then I even thought of using Plastruct fluorescent tubes (Like This), and while not lit might work until a better solution was found.  But then both amber and green would appear lit unless I only got one fluorescent tube and made the other from regular tubing.  And since they gather light from the side, I wouldn't be able to paint the sides which would never look right.

I even though about keeping part of the fluorescent tubing unpainted against the inside of the car, placing an LED on this unpainted part and hope the light would emit out the ends of the tubing.  But I doubt any paint put on the visible side would be enough to block light from glowing from an LED inside the car.

And if I ever find a lighting solution, I can't think of a way to realistically control the lights.  Well I could simply have a toggle switch to go from amber to green and back.  Or I could go advanced and use a decoder to change the lights.  But I was trying to think if there was anyway to somehow try and simulate the way they really operate.  When the train applies the brakes the lights change from green to amber, and when brakes are released they change back to green.  But I can't think of anything that would simulate this in HO, not even with DCC.

So is this probably not possible or even worth it?  I sure want to model these lights but haven't found a good solution yet.  I wonder if anyone else has done something similar and may have other ideas or tips to help me out.

[UP2CSX]

Matt,

This goes way beyond super-detailing. I don't think they've even invented a word for what you want to do. You've already gone through all the solutions I can think of and, I agree, none of them are really workable. The only other idea I can add would be to mount two grain of rice bulbs in the center of the car opposite the doors. You could use brass tubing to hold the bulbs and run fiber optic tubing to the appropriate light at each door. Just a small opening with a drop of glue for lense should work. You could wire in a magnetic DPDT switch to turn off one light and turn on the other. You'd also have to rig up some kind of shield so the lights weren't visible through the car windows.  

Now, would anyone but you notice all this work? I doubt it. If it's something you really want to do, have at it, but I don't think even the most dedicated rivet counter is going to notice that the door lights aren't there.

[csmith9474]

This is something that I have actually put quite a bit of thought into a couple of years back. I work with fiber optics on an almost daily basis, and it will still propagate light with some pretty extreme bends, but you shouldn't have to bend it too terribly bad to get the desired effect. We determined, as posted above, that some brass tubing would be the ticket for the housing. I believe you should be able to get a an LED that will give you both amber and green. You would need to mount the a light source in each end of the car for lighting in both directions.

Also mentioned is that this might be a little noticed detail by others, but it is one of those kind of modelling challenges that I enjoy. If you have some night running, it should look awesome. A simple dual function decoder could possibly used to control the lighting??

Also, if you want to try some "real" glass fiber optic strands, PM me your address, and I could cut and cleave a few pieces if you know what lengths would work for you. It is glass, so be careful not to get any stuck in you, or in your eye. It will take more abuse than what most people think, though. I also think that the glass is smaller than any of the plastic stuff available.

[csmith9474]

BTW, with a bright enough light source, and a good cleave, the lights should be more than bright enough to be visible during the "day" on the layout.

[Southwest Chief]

Thanks for the info Smitty.

This is exactly, like you, the kind of challenge I enjoy tackling.  I doubt anyone has done this yet and it would be cool to be the first.  Fibers sounded like the best choice and with all the room inside a Superliner there is no problem hiding LED light boxes.

I actually don't have any cars yet as I'm awaiting the new IVb Superliners with interiors from Walthers.  I'm really interested with the new interiors and interior lighting is a must.  That should be pretty simple, it's the side lights that is clearly going to be the challenge.

I also wonder if one of those magnetic "magic wand" toggles would work to change from green to amber.  A lot of options I guess for control, but I think I'll first get the lighting working...or actually first get the cars

Red marker lights are also a must on the rear sleeping car, but that is super easy to do.

[ndbprr]

An old article in MR showed how to make a streetlight using fiberoptics.  The author painted the fiber silver to prevent sideways leakage,  You could the drill the hole straight through the side and bend the fiberoptic thread so that one light would light both sides. It could be fairly simple to use one of the leds that can be made to light either green or amber to light the fiberoptics.

[csmith9474]

I wonder if it wouldn't be worth getting an old Con-Cor Superliner to experiment with before tearing into a "good" car. Those could probably had pretty cheap.

[Southwest Chief]

That is an excellent idea on the Con-Cor test car.  Yes I'd hate to mess up a good car.  I suppose it could really be any scrap car I have lying around.

And the green and amber LED in one would sure help...but I'm not sure I've seen any.  I've seen green and red on one.  I'll have to look into this some more.

[Bapou]

What scale is this? Oops I just re-read your original post HO scale does seem a bit small to do that. I have the anwser! G scale

[Southwest Chief]

What scale is this? Oops I just re-read your original post HO scale does seem a bit small to do that. I have the anwser! G scale

Take a look at the link in my signature (Snowshoe & San Juan) I'm G scaled out.  And Amtrak in G scale is just so dang big, not to mention the lack of readily available equipment.  I prefer narrow gauge trains in G scale.

[dinwitty]

Amtrak's Superliners have very noticeable brake/door indication lights on the sides of the cars near the entrance doors.  Currently the lights show green and amber aspects.  In the early days a third, red, aspect would light for emergency brake applications.  The red light was removed shortly before the Superliner II's arrived beginning in the mid 1990s. 

Here are two links I found online that best show the lights:

Amber Light

Green Light

What I haven't been able to find is the right solution to model these lights on say a Walthers Superliner.  I've looked into bulbs but all are way too big.  Then I looked into LED's and while some are super small like this (scroll down to colored Nano's) it's a surface mount and is unlikely to look right mounted on the end of a small tube, and may still be too big.

Then I looked into fiber optics but they cannot be bent as severely as I think I need.  What I initially thought of doing was gluing two small tubes on the side of the Superliner.  Then drill small holes in the tubes on the side attached to the Superliner to feed fiber optics into the tube.  But there would have to be two per tube and an almost 90 degree bend that would surely kink the fiber.  I'd have to bend it this severely as the light source has to be inside the car.  But these lights are not like markers on the end of a car, these are on the side but still are parallel to the body of the car.

Then I even thought of using Plastruct fluorescent tubes (Like This), and while not lit might work until a better solution was found.  But then both amber and green would appear lit unless I only got one fluorescent tube and made the other from regular tubing.  And since they gather light from the side, I wouldn't be able to paint the sides which would never look right.

I even though about keeping part of the fluorescent tubing unpainted against the inside of the car, placing an LED on this unpainted part and hope the light would emit out the ends of the tubing.  But I doubt any paint put on the visible side would be enough to block light from glowing from an LED inside the car.

And if I ever find a lighting solution, I can't think of a way to realistically control the lights.  Well I could simply have a toggle switch to go from amber to green and back.  Or I could go advanced and use a decoder to change the lights.  But I was trying to think if there was anyway to somehow try and simulate the way they really operate.  When the train applies the brakes the lights change from green to amber, and when brakes are released they change back to green.  But I can't think of anything that would simulate this in HO, not even with DCC.

So is this probably not possible or even worth it?  I sure want to model these lights but haven't found a good solution yet.  I wonder if anyone else has done something similar and may have other ideas or tips to help me out.

 

I took dual color LED's, spun them in a drill and narrowed down the end so they would slip into an RDC marker lights for that green/red marker light.

You can take an LED and file around on it for a shape you want they can tolerate that.

The next option is fiber optics. You might be able to find some detail parts, use a microdrill and insert a fiber optic thread.

 

[gmcrail]

And the green and amber LED in one would sure help...but I'm not sure I've seen any.  I've seen green and red on one.  I'll have to look into this some more.

 

Here's a link to one supplier of them (I use them for switch indicators):

 

http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G13458

 

Good luck...

 

[stan2004]

Not clear what the diameter is of your lens, and I'm probably misreading what you're trying to do, but if you cut a very small V-notch into plastic fiber (e.g., 0.5mm, 0.75mm, or flared up by heating as suggested earlier), you can inject light into that notch (coming from another fiber if need be).  The light will 'bend' the right angle and emit out the ends.  Yes, there's some loss but plenty of brightness from an LED.  I'm not sure why your Plastruct method would not work - like side-glow fiber rods where you would inject light on the side of the rod to make it emit out the ends (painting to mask leak).  As for the color change, a red-green dual-color LED, will emit amber if you turn on both LEDs at once.  So for green, power up the green, for amber, power up both red and green.  I'm not sure if your emergency red was a by-the-way, but obviously you could model just red too.  I made this rather odd photo:

in another modeling forum to illustrate to another modeler how a red-green LED can generate a variety of shades (including amber).  This is an array of red-green dual-color LEDs used in moving sign boards.  Each of the LEDs is a different mix of red and green current.  Again, I may have misunderstand why you need two fibers/holes, but it seems a single fiber from a red-green LED source can do what you want.  As for controlling the color, are you saying you're thinking of waving a magnet, or magnet on the end of a stick, over the car(s) to switch colors?  Ouch!  But if you do not have access to a DCC signal or an "I am braking" electrical signal from the engine it seems you must sense braking (deceleration).  Since this is already an over-the-top modeling application (which, to be clear, I think is very cool), there are solid-state accelerometers that are quite small, sensitive, and in the hobbyist $ realm.  If you run at scale speeds and scale braking, you can calculate the -G's in your application and see if one of these devices puts out enough Volts/G.  Granted, this requires some electronics DIY expertise and lots of tinkering time.  Or something I've been fooling with for passenger car interior lighting (albeit in O gauge), is an Infrared receiver chip so that a TV remote can control various lighting features in a passenger car like turning up brightness as train pulls into station. 

  

I don't know how much space you have in your HO car but the board in the photo is less than 1 sq. inch. Again, this takes some DIY persistence but still in the hobbyist realm.  Or, there are tiny R/C cars (under $10) where you could cannibalize the electronics to remotely control your colors.  If you have multiple cars, a single transmitter could switch colors on multiple cars.

 

 

 

[Southwest Chief]

Stan2004, excellent excellent advice. 

I never thought of notching a v.  I actually want less light then from an LED since the real lights are not extremely bright.  This sounds almost perfect for what I'm looking for.

But I've ruled out using a combined amber/green led since there would be a big problem with this setup.  Superliners have two light tubes.  One for amber, and one for green.  If I use a bi colored LED both tubes would show either amber or green at the same time.  But I only want one tube lit at one time.  So I'll have to find tiny individual LEDs to use for each light tube.

I made these simple diagrams showing what I'm looking for since I'm sure I confused everyone with my description:

In my diagrams both lights are lit, but in real life only one color is shown at one time.  And to clarify these are on both sides of the cars.  So there are four light tubes per car (used to be six when emergency red was used).  With the four tubes there are 8 points of light per car, but only 4 are ever on at one time since it either displays green or amber but not both. 

My planned Superliners (8 in all) will all have these lights along with varying LED interior lights and the end sleeper will also have two marker lights.  I plan to use a simple capacitor setup for each car to ensure flicker free lighting.  All lights per car will be hooked up to this setup, including the brake/door lights.  I think the best thing for now is to just use a toggle switch to change from green to amber.  I've found some really tiny ones that should work fine placed under the car. 

An accelerometer sounds interesting, but seems overkill.  And probably would work great for deceleration, but on acceleration the amber would likely stay on too long.  I'm wondering if there is anyway a decoder could somehow interpret signals to the locomotive engine that in turn could trigger changes in lights.  Unlikely but worth investigating.

Once the Superliners come in (late November) I hope to have a working plan set to go.  I'll soon be testing some ideas on scrap cars I have and will post what works the best.  Stay tuned.

[stan2004]

Now I get it. Your diagram makes it clear.  I'd say easiest is 2 LEDs, one green, one amber.  If you put black heatshrink around an LED, you can source multiple fibers with minimal light leak from the LED-to-fiber coupling.  I figure 1 LED can source both sides of the car.  The photo shows a 3mm LED, but heatshrink cover works equally well with SMT LEDs.  It also shows you can get pretty aggressive bending fiber; IIRC the rule of thumb is bending radius of 8x the fiber diameter or something like that.

The application of that color light chart was to, using a single LED package which is a separate story, illuminate the Red and Green wing-tip lights of a model plane.  So the single LED was a Red-Green LED which appeared orange, split via fiber as shown, and sent to each wing.  At each wing, the lens is painted red on one wing, green on the other so only the underlying monochomatic light comes out of each.  A standard white LED would not have worked since it is not full-spectrum like a incandescent bulb.  So to your application, if for whatever reason you made an LED light box (one per side) right up against the sides, you could project two monochromatic LEDs into the box, one green and one amber.  Your 2 tubes (4 lenses) would be painted with clear amber and clear green paint (or file down and polish plastic colored toothbrush handles which is a common technique for making lenses on model aircraft).  Because the light source is not full-spectrum, the respective lens would only light up when the matching LED turned on.  Obviously this would not work using a full-spectrum incandescent bulb as the source.

As for a decoder, it would take some DIY hacking, but the locomotive decoder obviously knows the current speed.  The decel rate is a known CV parameter.  So when a lower speed step arrives you know the 'braking' time and can activate the brake lights accordingly. 

Yup, I agree accelerometers are overkill especially if you had to put one in each car.  But to be clear, they sense sign and magnitude so you can distinguish between accel and decel.  I might have misunderstood your last post about amber staying on too long when accelerating (?).

But it sure would be cool if you could get the amber lights to turn on automatically or at least at-will (remote control) rather than one or the other for an entire session.

[Southwest Chief]

I think I might be wrong on the amber being on too long.  The real lights (I wonder how they work?), turn amber when the brakes are applied.  As soon as the brakes are released they turn green.  It's really neat to watch the real cars change in order as the brakes are slowly released from car to car. 

What I was thinking is as soon as I slow down and reach a certain speed, the accelerometer would turn the lights amber and stay on amber until I restarted and reached a certain speed to trigger the green.  To copy the real lights, the amber would turn off immediately and green turns on immediately after the brakes are released and not when it accelerates to a certain speed.  But, not being familiar with accelerometers, I could be all wrong here.

And to complicate things the lights also indicate door position.  I know Trains magazine recently answered a question on this and only mentioned the brakes, but I can confirm the door will also trigger the lights (door open = amber)(door closed and fully locked = green).  But I'm not interested in trying to copy this in a model...man would that be complicated.  And I'm not about to cut into the car doors just so they can open

I should add that each car will be separate, so no multi connector wires between cars as a shortcut.  However each will have HEP cables that attach with super small magnets.  I've done this before and it works and looks really cool.  Just have to watch out for tight radius curves with these.

These lights are certainly going to be a complicated aspect to model.  But I do so much night running.  And these lights would add so much with night running.  And it might be cool to take the trainset around to clubs and such.

[csmith9474]

Just out of curiosity, do the Walther's Superliners have the housing detail for the lights. I noticed that the Kato Superliners are going to have this detail. At least there is a housing to start with, if the included detail can be adapted to use with lighting.

[Southwest Chief]

With no production shots of the "new" Walthers Supers I'm not sure what they will have.  My guess is it's just an interior and truck upgrade.  They wouldn't bother changing the shell, unless the new interiors and light kit required some changes.

The current (although mostly out of stock) Walthers Superliners have a small molded area to simulate the brake/door indication lights.

The interesting thing is Walthers only made two light tubes.  When the Walthers Superliner I's came out, the trucks changed, as did the roof lines, and a few other details...but the brake/door lights were not touched.  While 2 lights are fine for phase IV.  The original Superliner I's in phase II and even up to phase III paint had three lights.

Another thing about the Walthers Superliners is the lack of the large circular entrance door light housings on the Superliner II's.  But to start nit picking I could go on forever.  Many, many details left off.  But the overall shell and Walthers quality paint job is just fine for me.

Kato's version is hot.  I love the end details with great looking HEP and Communicator receptacles.  The original number plate from phase II is great too.  I'm just worried about the coupler area.  It's wide open like TSP Hi-Levels, and Con-Cor Superliners

[csmith9474]

As far as the wide open area on the ends of the TSP hi levels, the hi level detail kit from Detail Associates includes the end yoke to fill that area in. It is like night and day. Fortunately I found a good source for the detail kits, even though Walther's has shown them out of stock for years. I am going to contact Detail Associates and see if I can purchase just the end yokes becuase I am going to be doing the Sunset Limited using TSP Budd core kits, and really want this detail.

[stan2004]

Here is an O-gauge approach which is admittedly a much simpler task.  OTOH, note many of the dimensions are not at the limits of common parts - 1/16" tubing is not the smallest, 1.0mm fiber is not the smallest, 0805 surface mount LED is not the smallest.  Hmmm, illumination being 2-D means the square of the scale ratio (87/48)^2 but then these LEDs are only driven at 5mA so using 20mA compensates with 4x the LED brightness. 

 

I experimented a bit with notching.  I didn't use/need it but discovered if the notch has a rough surface, shine the light into the tip rather than open end of the notch.  This seems counter-intuitive but I saw a 2x difference; if you try it, it will make sense right away. 

Note the gotcha about sliding the shell over the passenger seats.   You may not have this problem if your seats attach to the shell/frame before being attached to the floor.

[Southwest Chief]

Exactly what I want to do.  Nice job, very nice job