Installing lighting on Tomytec models.

[Christopher_R]

Greetings,

 

I am wondering if any good people here has installed custom lightning on Tomytec N gauge (1:150 scale) trains? 

 

The Tomytec trains I am referring to are the ones you buy the static models and purchase the motorised chassis, trailing unit metal wheels and weights and pantograph and assemble them.

 

In installing lights, I mean head lights, tail lights and interior lights. 

 

If anyone has done the above mentioned, I would like to know how it was done and if any pictures can be shared will be much appreciated.

 

 

Thanks on advance! 

[bill937ca]

The motorized chassis takes pretty much all of the interior which defeats interior lighting. If fact the first step is to remove the interior. With a multi car train the motor car would be dark and the trailing cars lighted. Why bother?

 

Our Rich Kerr thoroughly documents Tomix and Tomytec offerings.

http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/tomytec/index.htm

 

http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/chassis_dim.htm

[cteno4]

The biggest issue is mounting wheel power pickups into trucks and then you have to transfer the power into the chassis. There are some truck power pickup kits sold out of etched metal to power Kato trucks for use with Btrain shorties, but they are scarce and expensive. Then you then need to transfer the power from the truck to the chassis which is usually done with a spring or finger of brass that goes thru an arc in the floor of the chassis to wipe on a strip of brass that is floats on the truck pickup finger or the spring wipes on. I had a small pile of the power pickup trucks Bandai made briefly for Btrain shorties and my quick experiment showed that soldering magnet wire directly to the truck pickup finger worked well as making floating brass chassis strips was fiddly and a bit too resistant on the little shorty cars. I gave up on it when Bandai quickly stopped production of the pickup trucks.

 

you could probably roll your own truck pickups with some experimenting and etch a batch if you wanted a lot of cars done. Then cut slots in the chassis base to wire in the truck pickups. If you use the Tomix wheel sets you will need to do wheel pickup or axle bearing pickup.

 

for lights you could wire in any of the standard lighting kits and attach to the roof or roll your own with a resistor or a current regulator chip (keeps constant brightness, but one more component along with its regulating resistor for the chip) and even add a small tantalum cap to help with flicker. Head and tail lights could also be done but would require creating some light piles to them and LEDs for them wired up properly.

 

as bill notes Tomytec power chassises do come up to around the bottom of the windows or into them a tad this will stand out as more of a difference when lit up. Usually you don’t notice the chassis in an unlit train unless you get close.

 

fitting head and tail lights into a car with a chassis in it will also be a bit of a challenge as the chassises tend to take up a lot of the interior space to run a light pipe.

 

its all going to be a bit of work and the Tomytec cars were not designed with any forethought to adding lighting so it’s going to be a lot of roll your own fiddling. I’m sure there have been some done in Japan by modelers there, but it would probably be necessary to try and search for pages and videos using search terms in Japanese to try to find them. Using google translate sometime works for this, but it can be a tedious process to find the right terms.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[disturbman]

The answer is https://ism-works.shop-pro.jp/

We talked about them a few times. The offer kits for directional lights and interior lights. Difficulty varies from model to model, and installation requires a bit of patience. Notably because you need to translate the instructions first.

For ordering, you can use a proxy service or ask a friendly retailer.

Edited May 15 by disturbman

[Christopher_R]

On 5/14/2024 at 6:44 PM, bill937ca said:

The motorized chassis takes pretty much all of the interior which defeats interior lighting. If fact the first step is to remove the interior. With a multi car train the motor car would be dark and the trailing cars lighted. Why bother?

 

Our Rich Kerr thoroughly documents Tomix and Tomytec offerings.

http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/tomytec/index.htm

 

http://www.trainweb.org/tomix/chassis_dim.htm

Greetings friend,

 

Yes, I am aware of that......however it's something I will overlook as a trade off for a somewhat more affordable model and the other advantages that come with it.

 

Best regards!

[Christopher_R]

On 5/15/2024 at 2:14 AM, cteno4 said:

The biggest issue is mounting wheel power pickups into trucks and then you have to transfer the power into the chassis. There are some truck power pickup kits sold out of etched metal to power Kato trucks for use with Btrain shorties, but they are scarce and expensive. Then you then need to transfer the power from the truck to the chassis which is usually done with a spring or finger of brass that goes thru an arc in the floor of the chassis to wipe on a strip of brass that is floats on the truck pickup finger or the spring wipes on. I had a small pile of the power pickup trucks Bandai made briefly for Btrain shorties and my quick experiment showed that soldering magnet wire directly to the truck pickup finger worked well as making floating brass chassis strips was fiddly and a bit too resistant on the little shorty cars. I gave up on it when Bandai quickly stopped production of the pickup trucks.

 

you could probably roll your own truck pickups with some experimenting and etch a batch if you wanted a lot of cars done. Then cut slots in the chassis base to wire in the truck pickups. If you use the Tomix wheel sets you will need to do wheel pickup or axle bearing pickup.

 

for lights you could wire in any of the standard lighting kits and attach to the roof or roll your own with a resistor or a current regulator chip (keeps constant brightness, but one more component along with its regulating resistor for the chip) and even add a small tantalum cap to help with flicker. Head and tail lights could also be done but would require creating some light piles to them and LEDs for them wired up properly.

 

as bill notes Tomytec power chassises do come up to around the bottom of the windows or into them a tad this will stand out as more of a difference when lit up. Usually you don’t notice the chassis in an unlit train unless you get close.

 

fitting head and tail lights into a car with a chassis in it will also be a bit of a challenge as the chassises tend to take up a lot of the interior space to run a light pipe.

 

its all going to be a bit of work and the Tomytec cars were not designed with any forethought to adding lighting so it’s going to be a lot of roll your own fiddling. I’m sure there have been some done in Japan by modelers there, but it would probably be necessary to try and search for pages and videos using search terms in Japanese to try to find them. Using google translate sometime works for this, but it can be a tedious process to find the right terms.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

Greetings friend,

 

Thanks for the reply and advice! Yes, it is going to be an challenge and will have to come up with some custom set up.

 

I was just wondering if anyone has done this as to get some ideas as some inspirations.

 

That said, I do like a challenge on this matter as it will be an interesting one.

 

Maybe I should do it and post some pictures (hopefully).

 

 

Once again, thank you and best regards!

 

 

 

[Beaver]

Green Max motorised chassis are much more compact than Tomytec with the top below window level so the interior appears open. They run better too. Given how standardised the real thing is both ranges unsurpisingly offer many of the same lengths and bogie specifications.

 

It might be possible to fit one instead of the intended Tomytec to make space for interior detail and lighting in the motor car. Not sure how much modification to the body would be needed -  the attachment points are different but not that different.

[brill27mcb]

Christopher, do you mean the longer Tomytec emu trains, or the single or two-car Tomytec items that use the TM-series power chassis?

 

I find little need for interior lighting, since I do not run my models in darkened rooms, and in a lifetime of riding real passenger trains daily I never saw a real coach's lighting come visibly out of the often-tinted windows in daylight conditions. (Only on Lionel toy trains...)

 

If you just want headlights and taillights, that is easy to do yourself, if you can do some basic soldering. You simply string together an LED, a current-limiting resistor and a protective diode (to keep reverse current from damaging the LED) in series. Solder the two leads from this assembly to the power strips in the powered chassis. Orient a white or yellow-white LED and diode in one polarity direction for a directional headlight, and a red LED and diode in the other polarity direction for a directional taillight. You can do this at both ends of the chassis. The cost is very low.

 

Many small LEDs are readily available today, and many come with thin lead wires and current-limiting resistors (sized for 12 volt use) already attached. You can drill out the model's headlight casing, insert a small tube long enough to stick out inside the shell, and then optionally place a short piece of plastic insulation off the right size wire onto the tube. When you assemble the model you stick the LED with its long leads into the insulation or the tube. That way the light does not leak into the interior of the car and the LED lines up with the headlight opening. If you have to disassemble the car, separate the shell from the chassis and then carefully slide the LEDs out of their insulation holders or tubes. You end up with the shell entirely disconnected electrically from the chassis.

 

Rich K.

[Christopher_R]

On 5/22/2024 at 5:07 AM, brill27mcb said:

Christopher, do you mean the longer Tomytec emu trains, or the single or two-car Tomytec items that use the TM-series power chassis?

 

I find little need for interior lighting, since I do not run my models in darkened rooms, and in a lifetime of riding real passenger trains daily I never saw a real coach's lighting come visibly out of the often-tinted windows in daylight conditions. (Only on Lionel toy trains...)

 

If you just want headlights and taillights, that is easy to do yourself, if you can do some basic soldering. You simply string together an LED, a current-limiting resistor and a protective diode (to keep reverse current from damaging the LED) in series. Solder the two leads from this assembly to the power strips in the powered chassis. Orient a white or yellow-white LED and diode in one polarity direction for a directional headlight, and a red LED and diode in the other polarity direction for a directional taillight. You can do this at both ends of the chassis. The cost is very low.

 

Many small LEDs are readily available today, and many come with thin lead wires and current-limiting resistors (sized for 12 volt use) already attached. You can drill out the model's headlight casing, insert a small tube long enough to stick out inside the shell, and then optionally place a short piece of plastic insulation off the right size wire onto the tube. When you assemble the model you stick the LED with its long leads into the insulation or the tube. That way the light does not leak into the interior of the car and the LED lines up with the headlight opening. If you have to disassemble the car, separate the shell from the chassis and then carefully slide the LEDs out of their insulation holders or tubes. You end up with the shell entirely disconnected electrically from the chassis.

 

Rich K.

Hello Rich,

 

 

Thanks for your reply and how to install the headlights and taillights.

 

The Tomytec trains I have are 3 HOe trains, two with TM-08R chassis and one with TM-TR07 two axle chassis, and two 1:150 trains: Chichibu 1000 series with TM-08R chassis. All have TT-03R trailer kits.

 

I plan to install head and tail lights on all of them which is really straight forward (of course, custom made).

 

The problem I will be most likely have is installing headlights and taillights on non powered units. Pretty sure it can be done and would be a challenge.

 

Regarding interior lighting, I do run my trains in the dark (well, dimly lit room) when I can as I like it and all my other 1:150 scale trains have them fitted. However, I do find them to be too bright and thought to see if I do install interior lights, I do want it dim as possible as to only 'glow' in the dark. 

 

With regards to the above two paragraphs, the biggest challenge to me is installing electrical picks ups which will definitely require a custom job. I do have another idea of running wires from the power units to the non powered ones. It remains to be seen.

 

 

Thanks again and best regards!

[Kamome]

The bogies on the Tomytec HO Naro trains will swap out for another Tomix bogie with contacts if necessary . You could then solder wires to these to power your tail lights/interior lights in the non powered coaches. Alternatively add copper contact pieces to the axles. Probably need to mill out recesses in the existing bogies for this. 

 

The other option would be to fashion some wiper pickups or I’ve seen it done with a spring wrapped around the middle axle as long as thats metal and one wheel is isolated. Just need to make sure the wheels are in the right way, so that both polarities are suitably connected. 

Edited May 28 by Kamome

[cteno4]

Christopher,

 

if you find your lights too bright you can always wire in a small variable resistor to dim them some at your running speed. Traditional lighting kits have the issue of having the LEDs at like 80% brightness at 12v. This gives you mini suns in the carriages and means the cars get righter as the train goes faster with more voltage supplied. The way around this is to use a power regulator chip that will spit out a constant current output. You just feed it 0-12v and it spits out a set voltage and amperage. You set the amps by a resistor across two of the pins. So once your voltage hits around 4-5v the lights come onto your set value (the amps you set the regulator chip to output with the resistor) and it stays at that brightness even when voltage is increased. Really is a slick way to keep constant brightness lighting if you are rolling your own lighting. Toss in a capacitor (or more, you can go small with tantalum bricks not too expensively) to help with any flicker from pickup issue. Here is a great tutorial video.

 

 

we have had a few mentions around the forums of folks trying to make power connectors between cars using magnets (took a Quick Look but didn’t find the posts). You can easily get 2mm dia x 1mm thick magnets all over and 1mm and smaller magnets from specialty places. Ideas is use silver glue (carry’s a current) to glue magnets onto the ends of wires at the ends of cars. Issue is getting magnets small and at the same time hold with the flex of the wires as so small hard to get the wire super flexible.

 

jeff

[Christopher_R]

On 5/21/2024 at 10:06 PM, Beaver said:

Green Max motorised chassis are much more compact than Tomytec with the top below window level so the interior appears open. They run better too. Given how standardised the real thing is both ranges unsurpisingly offer many of the same lengths and bogie specifications.

 

It might be possible to fit one instead of the intended Tomytec to make space for interior detail and lighting in the motor car. Not sure how much modification to the body would be needed -  the attachment points are different but not that different.

Greetings Beaver,

 

Thanks for the input. I'll look into it in the future.....at the moment however, I've had no issues with the Tomytec chassis I run and in fact are rather impressed by their performance (given that they ARE 'budget' priced IMO).

 

Also, not to mention, I'm not really fussed about seen the motor assembly when lit as to me it's an acceptable trade off as the models are somewhat low cost.

 

Regards and thanks!

Edited May 28 by Christopher_R

[Christopher_R]

On 5/26/2024 at 9:00 AM, Kamome said:

The bogies on the Tomytec HO Naro trains will swap out for another Tomix bogie with contacts if necessary . You could then solder wires to these to power your tail lights/interior lights in the non powered coaches. Alternatively add copper contact pieces to the axles. Probably need to mill out recesses in the existing bogies for this. 

 

The other option would be to fashion some wiper pickups or I’ve seen it done with a spring wrapped around the middle axle as long as thats metal and one wheel is isolated. Just need to make sure the wheels are in the right way. so that both polarities are connect. 

Kamome,

 

Thanks for the tips. Really should look into that...... I am weighing options at the moment and am inclined to go with routing wires from the powered cars to the none powered ones......

 

Regards!

[Christopher_R]

On 5/26/2024 at 11:03 PM, cteno4 said:

Christopher,

 

if you find your lights too bright you can always wire in a small variable resistor to dim them some at your running speed. Traditional lighting kits have the issue of having the LEDs at like 80% brightness at 12v. This gives you mini suns in the carriages and means the cars get righter as the train goes faster with more voltage supplied. The way around this is to use a power regulator chip that will spit out a constant current output. You just feed it 0-12v and it spits out a set voltage and amperage. You set the amps by a resistor across two of the pins. So once your voltage hits around 4-5v the lights come onto your set value (the amps you set the regulator chip to output with the resistor) and it stays at that brightness even when voltage is increased. Really is a slick way to keep constant brightness lighting if you are rolling your own lighting. Toss in a capacitor (or more, you can go small with tantalum bricks not too expensively) to help with any flicker from pickup issue. Here is a great tutorial video.

 

 

we have had a few mentions around the forums of folks trying to make power connectors between cars using magnets (took a Quick Look but didn’t find the posts). You can easily get 2mm dia x 1mm thick magnets all over and 1mm and smaller magnets from specialty places. Ideas is use silver glue (carry’s a current) to glue magnets onto the ends of wires at the ends of cars. Issue is getting magnets small and at the same time hold with the flex of the wires as so small hard to get the wire super flexible.

 

jeff

Greetings Jeff,

 

Wow! Thanks for the information and that video. Excellent! Lot of ideas now in my mind.

 

Love the idea of installing magnets for electrical connections between cars. Although I have found some small enough electrical connectors too. 

 

Let's see what can be done!

 

Thanks again and best regards!