#135 ~ Decodering

Installing, Wiring, and Programing a TCS KAM4-LED Decoder.

Train Control Systems Keep Alive Decoder for LEDs.

Hot Glued the decoder to the ceiling right in the center of the car.

The wiring is pretty straight forward except that the Red wires are attached to the trolley pole bases and the Black wires to all wheels:

Red = Trolley Poles

Black = Wheels

Orange = Motor

Grey = Motor

Blue = Lighting Power Bus (positive (+) ).

White = Headlight (-)

Yellow = Rear Headlight (-)

Green = Forward Interior Lights (-)

Purple = Rear Interior Lights (-)

Programing

With the Digitrax Zephyr

Programing the new address to #135:

1. Place car on the programing track.

2. Press 'Program Mode' on the Zephyr. until display reads as 'dir'.

3. Press 'LOCO' button. Display reads 'Ad2' for addresses 1-127, press again to display 'Ad4' for addresses 128-9999.

4. Press '1' and '3' and '5'. Display will read '0135'.

5. Press 'CV-WR'. Display will blink the 'Ad#' and then '0135'.

6. Return the car to the mainline to test it.

Some CV's need to be changed.  The Green wire (forward interior lights) defaults to the Function 1 (F1) button which is fine. But the Purple wire (rear interior lights) defaults to the F2 button which is a momentary contact button normally used for locomotive whistles (the whistle sounds when the button is held down). Which means that the interior lights on car #135 only light when the button is held down. So the purple wire needs to be remapped to the F3 button instead.

Digitrax Zephyr Function buttons. 

I need to remap the Green wire (CV 35) from function button 2 (F2) to function button 3 (F3).

Even though these trolley cars are bi-directional I have designated the open section as the forward end of the car to simplify things (the open section is easier to see into so I want to put my motorman figure in that end). 

Green wire (CV 35) = Front                Purple wire (CV 36) = Rear.

To remap the button-

Program:     CV 35 V=4  (simply confirm this value since this is the default)

                      CV 36 V=16 (from the default value of 8)

Remapping CV's is easiest using JMRI Decoder Pro

Otherwise its button mashing on the Zephyr:

1. Place car on the programing track.

2. Activate 'Program Mode' on the Zephyr. Program Mode light lights up.

3. Press the 'CV' button. Display reads 'ad2' or 'ad4'.

4. Press '3' and '6'. Display reads '0036'.

5. Press the 'CV' button again. Display still reads '0036'.

6. Press '1' and '6'. Display reads the value of '0016'.

7. Press the 'CV-WR' button. Display should blink once as it writes to the decoder.

8. Return the car to the mainline to test it.

And that ought to do it!

Yes sir!

That oughta do it!

Dandy

#135 ~ Illumination

 Headlights

Installing LEDs for the headlights.

Working headlights on streetcar models I find to be most helpful when working with DCC.  When I place the car on the track the first thing I do is hit the headlight button on the command station to determine if the car is getting power and responding to commands. If the car has been sitting on a siding for a while but the headlight is still on, then I know it hasn't ventured onto a dirty piece of track and the KeepAlive lost its power. So I always try to have working headlights on my cars.

The rounded lens of these LEDs look great as a headlight.

1.8mm, 3 volt, warm white LEDs works for this. The lens portion will fit inside the housing while the square portion glued against the inside wall.

Reaming out the housing a bit was required to accommodate the LED.

Perfect fit! Positive leads on top, negative on the bottom. But the square portion of the bulb is still a bulb, which means it will be casting light inside the car. So...

Black paint to block the light from the back of the LEDs, but keeping the lens clear.

Wire Routing. The leads to the LEDs are bent and trimmed so as to aid in routing the wires past the windows and up to the decoder that is mounted on the ceiling.

Illuminated.  I hooked it up to a battery to test it out and voila!

Yes sir!

Voila!

Dandy

The Real № 9 in Action

Old Photo of № 9 Making Its Way Down 5th Street.

or it could be #10, I can't make out a number. ca1890

But I can make out that I put the headlight in the wrong place. This photo shows it on the roof. I wish I had seen this photo sooner. Installing the headlight on the roof would have been so much easier!

Yes sir! It would have been so much easier!

Dandy

№ 9 ~ Guiding Light

 Adding Headlights

The prototype didn't have headlights but on models the headlights are a great way to determine if the car is communicating with the DCC command station without having to run the car out of the carhouse. And since this model has a headlight casting on it, I might as well add headlights.

I should have done this before I painted the car. But the decoder has all these features for directional headlights, so I might as well use them.

Tiny LEDs. I picked up these 1.8mm/2mm LEDs online. I had to trim the leads very short to get it to fit on the car. The body of the LED is painted black so that only the "bulb" lit up.

Black Blob. Soldering the wires to the short leads proved to be tricky. I burnt one LED attempting this. But using a needle nose pliers as a heat sink helped. Then I slathered the whole thing with Liquid Electrical Tape to prevent shorting.  Yes sir! "Slathered"!

Routing the wires from the LEDs down through holes drilled in the floor, superglued along the bottom of the floor, then routed up inside the car to where the decoder will be.

A blop of Micro Kristal Klear for the headlight lens.

"Happiness can be found

even in the darkest of times,

if one only remembers to

turn on the light."

Albus Dumbledore

Yes sir! Remember to turn on the light!

Dandy

Niles Project ~ Resistification

Because LED's are diodes and don't behave like a resistor, a current limiting resistor is needed to prevent the current from exceeding the operating limits of the LED's.

Determining the size of resistor to use was simple enough. John McWhirter and I soldered the 4 LED's together in series. Then we attached a best guess resistor in series with them. Then we gave the circuit "the juice". 15 volts DC. We then carefully considered the results. If the lights were too bright for what I wanted, we would then replace the resistor with a" stronger" one. If the lights were too dim, then we replaced the resistor with a "lighter" one.

Actually, it was easier than I'm letting on because John has built a box with an array of resistors in it. A rotary switch switches from one resistor to another. So all we had to do really was connect our LED assembly to it and with a simple flip of the switch, find the the setting that gave me the illumination I was looking for.

Eventually we determined that a 1000 Ohm resistor (brown, black, red, gold bands) provided the right amount of juice to the 4 LED's to achieve reasonable illumination for the interior compartments of the trolley.

For the one headlight, we determined that a 15000 Ohm resistor works best (brown, green, orange, gold bands).

My next objective was to determine the most unobtrusive location to mount the resistors. I can't mount the resistors on the circuit board because they would interfere with the ability of the circuit boards to slip between the bulkheads and the ceiling. It would also be nice if the resistors weren't someplace visible through the windows. So this is where I got clever...

I need a jumper from the blue wire (lighting positive common) bus on the bottom of the circuit board to the LED leads on top of the circuit board. So why not have the resistor fill that bill? The leads to the resistors were bent so that one lead solders on top and the other lead solders on the bottom with the resistor itself on the front edge of the circuit board. Works for me. Yes sir! Works for me just fine!

Dandy

Niles Project ~ Interior Lighting Wiring Schematic

This is going to take a little planing.

Things are getting a little complicated:

• The decoder can't light 8 interior LEDs because of milliamp limitations. So the LEDs are going to be split between two functions of the decoder. Four LEDs on the purple wire, and four LEDs on the green wire.
• The LEDs have to be oriented correctly. Unlike incandescent bulbs, LEDs have a positive and negative side to them.
• The LEDs require resistors.
  
• The blue wire of the decoder is the common positive lead to all the interior lights and to both headlights.
• In attempt to keep things neat and tidy and serviceable, circuit board is being used as a mount for the interior lights, a bus for the headlights, and as a soldering pad for the decoder wires.

So after a lot of trail and error, I drew this schematic to help make things crystal clear:

Okay, so here is where we left off...

This shows the top and bottom of one of the two circuit boards (as it sits in the car). On the top, the copper cladding has been cut vertically to electrically isolate the LEDs so that they can be wired in series. On the bottom, the copper cladding has been cut horizontally. The top strip will be the bus for the blue wire, the bottom strip will be the bus for either the white or yellow headlights wire. The vertical cut provides a soldering pad for either the purple or green wire.

So that's the plan man. Time to put the plan into action. Yes sir! Put this plan to action!

Dandy

Niles Project ~ Illuminatification

Installing interior lighting, LED's this time, and in their prototypically correct locations of all places.

The September 1908 edition of the Electric Traction Weeklys article on the new Niles Cars for San Diego (graciously forwarded to me by Bill Bolton) included an interior shot of these cars. Looking at this photo, I was able to ascertain the locations of the lights in the car (despite the fact that all of the lights weren't shown). Which got me to thinkin' (which could be dangerous) what would it take to light the car prototypically? Would the car look any different/better if it was lit prototypically? Would it be worth the time and effort to light the car prototypically? And why doesn't my spell check like the word "prototypically"? Well, there is only one way to find out. And that is to light the car prototypically (spellcheck be damned!).

This photo was shot in the enclosed section of the California style Niles Cars, probably standing in the doorway of one of the two bulkheads looking towards the second bulkhead. Visible are three lights (or 6 if were counting bulbs). The car is symmetrical so its safe to assume the forth light is just out of frame above.

 

The lights are evenly spaced so, if I continue the spacing into the open end sections of the car, we have a total of 8 interior lights. Seems reasonable enough. As long as the decoder can handle lighting that many lights. Since the lights would be lit more on the dim side, it should.

I've seen traction models with their lights mounted on a strip of circuit board. That seems like a really good idea to me, so that's the route I'm going to take. But because the Niles cars have those bulkheads inside, I'm going to have to split the circuit board into two sections. The bulkheads don't reach all the way into the deck (or clerestory) section, so the circuit boards are able to slip over the top of the bulkheads. But the bulkheads definitely limit the length of the circuit boards.

 

LED's are the way to go. They require less voltage, they don't burn as hot, and last a lot longer, than incandescent bulbs do. But as you can imagine, jamming 8 Christmas LED's into these cars would be ridiculous. So instead, I'm opting for the tiny SMD (Surface Mount Diodes)LEDs (warm white). John McWhirter recommended purchasing the SMD LED's from TrainAidsA. They specialize in electronics for model railroading. I have found them to be very helpful.

 

The circuit board is cut to size. Then holes are drilled for the LED lights and also where the base of the trolley poles pass through the roof. The holes for the lights are filed square to match the size of the LED's. Then the copper clad is notched with a saw to separate the positive and negative sides of each LED. The opposite side the circuit board is notched length wise to act as a bus for the headlights (see photo below).

 

Here are the circuit boards with the LEDs installed. This is actually my second attempt, I had the polarity of the LEDs reversed last time! The round holes are for the trolley pole base to pass through, so these boards have a front end and a back end. The pole holes denote the front end of the circuit board. The white wires are soldered towards the front end, the black wires towards the back end. The back ends of the circuits boards will butt against each other in the center of the car:

 

This test fit revealed the circuit boards fit quite snug between the ceiling and the bulkheads. I don't think any adhesive will be needed to keep them in place.

Next, I have to determine how bright the lights should be. This will determine the size of resistors required. Then we'll have this car illuminating quite nicely. Yes sir! Illuminating quite nicely!

Dandy

Niles Project ~ Christmas Headlights

Shaping Christmas lights LEDs to work as headlights.

Well a year ago I encouraged you all to seize on the end of Christmas sales to grab cheap LED's. Well, I should have known, but it turns out that...

... Christmas LED's come in different sizes (and colors). The bulbs I grabbed (left) are way too big to use as headlights. Fortunately, I have a good friend in John McWhirter who gave me some of his Christmas bulbs (right) that fit the Niles cars perfectly.

To get a good fit for the bulb in the headlight opening, a little shaping of the LED's leads is necessary. Then the tip of the bulb is shaped into a lens shape.

Looking through doorway to see the inside of the front, you can see how well the bulb fits into the hole. And how the leads are bent around the housing and then up the widow posts. Which brings up a little problem; does the window glass go over or under the leads? Obviously, the glass would look best pressed against the window frame. So the glass goes under the leads. Which means, the next step is installing the window glass. Yes sir! Installing the window glass is next.

Dandy

Niles Project ~ Headlight and Retrievers

Apparently, in the early days of trolleys, headlights were not standard equipment.

Since nighttime photographs were difficult and therefore rare, no photographs in my collection depict any of the Niles cars with headlights. For years I figured that either the cars didn't run at night, or they ran without headlights. But studying my collection closer reveals:

1. A bracket. And some wear and tear just above it. It could very well have been a headlight bracket and that it was often used.

2. A builders illustration including a headlight. It also depicts how the headlight sits low and rests on the front bumper (?).

3. Historical conformation of just such an arrangement. Pacific Electric 1001, which still exists today, sports a same sort headlamp. It fits onto a braket and you can see how a cord extends from it and has to be plugged in.

Precision Scale Co. Incandescent Headlamp For Interurban Cars #31004 seems to fit the bill quite nicely. The sprue on the back has to be cut off and then I filed the back for a good fit on the car. While I'm at it, I'll add the retriever fabricated from a 3/64" brass rod.

So now we are good to go with some night time running. Yes sir! We're good to go!

Dandy