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Kato Light Kit!!!


Sascha

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My Kato 11-206 light kit arrived, and I installed it into my 0-2000 (10-1132) Shinkansen.

When I run the train the light flickers and the light only reaches half of the car and fades out at the end.I searched online for videos, and even found some in the forum, but non explained why my light does that.They seemed installed right, and I cleaned the track twice, but no change.

Help please!!!!

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Martijn Meerts

Kato (and Tomix for that matter) only use a single LED to light the entire car. The problem with that is that the light is MUCH brighter on 1 end compared to the other end. There's nothing you can do about that, except going for a different solution.

 

The flickering can be caused by dirty wheels as well, not just dirty track. There's always going to be some flickering though considering there's no electronics to prevent it happening. Again, the only option here is to go for a different solution.

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Martijn Meerts

A popular solution is using LED strips like this one: http://www.ebay.de/itm/5M-600-SMD-LED-Leiste-Strip-Band-Streifen-Warmweis-wasserfest-/181289895609?pt=DE_Möbel_Wohnen_Nachtlichter_Lichtsäulen&hash=item2a35b846b9 .. It would require a little more work considering you need to solder some wires to it, and to the power pickups of the car. 

 

There's a good post here about flicker free light (which uses those LED strips), and while this is DCC, if I remember right there's some info about non-DCC in that thread as well. http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/8403-shinkansen-dcc-interior-lighting-with-flicker-free-feature

 

 

As for brightness, the video's might have been shot while the track voltage was at max, or using DCC. However, interior light kits are almost always far too bright, and a lot of people actually try to dim them to a more reasonable level.

Edited by Martijn Meerts
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That helps. Thank you. One more question. How do you install the light kit into the motor car? It doesn't has the part to slide in the connectors.

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Martijn Meerts

The Kato kit? That should work the same as any other car really.. I'm not sure though, it's been a while since I've installed a light kit.. Once I noticed the different in brightness between one end of the car compared to the other end, I stopped installing the kits :)

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Oh. I think the motor car on the 0-2000 Shinkansen doesn't have any lights. There are no seats in it, so I guess they use the wagon to store things like packages and food.

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Oh. I think the motor car on the 0-2000 Shinkansen doesn't have any lights. There are no seats in it, so I guess they use the wagon to store things like packages and food.

 

That would be the buffet car; mine certainly has representations for the tops of seats, so if you look at it from the side it looks normal, but the "floor" is at the level of the lower window edge to accommodate the motor(s). Pretty much any EMU/DMU suffers from the same problem (my recently acquired SquidMobile is all raised floor and nary a hint of seating), as technology hasn't yet advanced enough to hang scale-size motors in the bogies...

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making an electrical connector between cars would help

 

Tomix already did it with their 'power couplers'..

So if I want light throughout the wagon then Tomix would be the better choice? I guess the power coupler system is new ?

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That would be the buffet car; mine certainly has representations for the tops of seats, so if you look at it from the side it looks normal, but the "floor" is at the level of the lower window edge to accommodate the motor(s). Pretty much any EMU/DMU suffers from the same problem (my recently acquired SquidMobile is all raised floor and nary a hint of seating), as technology hasn't yet advanced enough to hang scale-size motors in the bogies...

So every N gauge train has one car that can't be lit?

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Oha. I just found out why my light is so dim. I bought the old 11-204 set. Going to upgrade to the 11-211 version. $20 out of the window. [emoji45]

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited by Sascha
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So every N gauge train has one car that can't be lit?

No.  Some require have special lighting kits just for the motor cars.  Some require you to cut down the lighting kit to fit.

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there would be a way.  nothing in the instructions?  did the kit or motor car come with some long L shaped gold connectors?  these normall have to be sometimes bent into weird shapes/angles.

Edited by katoftw
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They did came with the connectors, but they don't fit anywhere. And the part with the light doesn't has a place to connect it either.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Nope. If, than they are in Japanese. It shows how to put the light into the other cars, but not in this one. I'll try it out when I'm off work. Thanks for your help.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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