I'm a little disappointed with Rapido's, they are a little too dim for my tastes, and kinda greenish. I'm also not crazy about the wand thingamajig. Battery powered lights? Why not track powered like everything else? And why are these cars so expensive, $60 for one sleeper?
I was looking for something brighter with more of a yelow/orangish lightbulb looking glow, obviously not too bright as to blind the imaginary passengers, but still enough that it catches your eye. Will Walthers kits do the trick and are they easy to install?
If anybody has any pics or videos of some cars lit with these kits, that would be great.
The brighter coach has Walther's DC lights, the other two have DCC lights. I had to do some cutting to make the DC one fit. DJ.
The Walthers single level lighting kits use incandescent bulbs. I say single level because they also make the ones that fit in their Superliners which I have. The Superliner light kits use white LEDs and only light the top floor.
You may want to check out Minatronics light kits. They have a capacitor that remain on for 4 minutes after the power is killed to the track.
Will
rjake:
My Walther's Rio Grande passenger cars are lit with their DC lighting kits, and they have a nice, fairly bright orange glow to them (not enough to blind my Prieser passengers, LOL!).
However, like most track-dependent lighting kits, their constancy depends on clean track and clean wheels. If I haven't cleaned my track in a while, I get a flicker.
No photos or videos, but as long as I keep my track clean (which I'm pretty good at), my "Royal Gorge" and "Prospector" do the trick pretty well. They're not hard to install, as the Walthers cars have ready-made slits for the lighting tabs. But you do have to do some minor adujstments to get the roof to lie flat once you've got them installed.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Thanks Tom, do you know why the DCC versions are not as bright as the DC ones?
rjake4454 Thanks Tom, do you know why the DCC versions are not as bright as the DC ones?
Did you search these forums before posing your question? The Walthers passenger car lighting kits have been cussed and discussed on these forums several times over the past year.
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=Walthers+passenger+car+lighting+kits+AND+sectionid%3a88&o=Relevance
I have been using the Miniatronics light kits in the last couple of passenger cars I have done. They have one with yeloglo LEDs for heavyweights with incandescent lights and a more blueish LED for lightweights with floroescent lights. They are bright and the last one I bought included 3 resistors of different values to dim the lights if they are too bright.
This is my lightweight coach with the "fluroscent" lights (the interior is blue, so the light effect may be more blue that with other interior colors)
and the lightweight and heavyweight coach together
They are stocked by Walthers; here is a listhttp://www.walthers.com/exec/search?category=&scale=&manu=miniatronics&item=&keywords=interior&words=restrict&instock=Q&split=300&Submit=Search
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch