After a recent discussion with a fellow garden railroader about car lighting I thought I would share my thoughts.

Having gone full circle on car lighting, from nothing to metal wheels with pickups I have lite all my coach cars with battery powered LED’s ( 2xAAA ) and hid the battery pack in the top clearstory, cutting out a little of the patrician at one end and shoving the battery holder under it. Added a very small slide switch in the clearstory area that I got at a RC hobby shop. Used 10mm soft white LED’s colored with a yellow high lighter pen. Used copper tape, type used to make stained glass windows with, taped on top of a styrene tube, soldering the LED’s to it and secured the tube in the stock location of the roof where it is designed for incandescent lighting . Soldered wiring from battery holder and switch to copper strips which I had soldered the LED’s to. Easy to turn on and off. Accidently left 1 car on for a week and found it one night with the lights still lit, and still haven’t changed the batteries. No wiring shows and no flicker, thought I would share my idea with the forum, Bill

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Thanks Bill, seems like an easy enough fix that even I can do. This might be what I can do for some of my structure lighting as well.

Mike Wlez said:

Thanks Bill, seems like an easy enough fix that even I can do. This might be what I can do for some of my structure lighting as well.

Mike when I started in LED’s I was using batteries but then discovered solar partway lights at Wal-Mart for $.98, since then that’s all I use type into advanced search " solar lights" and you can read and see what I’m talking about. The neat thing is they come on by themselves and shut off the same and what’s really cool is they don’t all come one at the same time or off, looks very realistic.

Without modifying a car, you could use a reed switch on the inside to turn on power and just use a magnet on the outside.

Dan, great idea. Aren’t reed switches momentary? Or do they have latching reed switches?

They do make latching reed switches, only they call them relays. Just hold a magnet near one and it latches on, do it again and it turns off.

You need to find the correct voltage for the relay.

Reeds can be normally open or normally closed. To make the cars look good when running I would use normally closed, when not running the magnet will disconnect the power.

Reeds like the ones in Phoenix sound units are rated for 500 ma at over 100 volts.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/standex-meder-electronics/MK15-B-2-OE/374-1209-2-ND/2765323

Reeds can be normally open or normally closed. To make the cars look good when running I would use normally closed, when not running the magnet will disconnect the power.

Reeds like the ones in Phoenix sound units are rated for 500 ma at over 100 volts.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/standex-meder-electronics/MK15-B-2-OE/374-1209-2-ND/2765323