I've been preaching this for years. Thanks for sharing!

Did you order the pre-wired SMDs?  I couldn't imagine attempting to solder that miniscule magnetic wire to that near-invisible soldering pad...  My entire fleet is going to have functional ditchlights so this is a wonderful post!

Johnny,

Absolutely I ordered prewired SMDs. Even so the magnetic wire snapped once or twice, forcing me to get out the magnifying lens.

My advice... order some spares!

James

Can't wait to snap my first wire... ha!

I first started looking into the SMDs for truck illumination (not sure what railroaders call these lights) but, as I look into it, I think using body-mounted fiber-optics might be an easier solution and would eliminate the probability of breaking one of the 4 sets of magnetic wire every time I'd need to take off the shell.

My goal is to have step/walkway lights, truck lights and number boards all illuminated and mapped to be on constantly like the prototype in my area. Personally, I appreciate accurate lighting details more so than any other superdetailing aspects.  It just completes the entire feel of a true model for me.

Some UK modelers actually have built many of the "parade" trams in "00" scale, lights an' all.

I've been mentally playing with the idea of adding ditch lights to my locomotives, and I'd like to see how you routed the wires...

Jeff,

No progress photos, which means I missed out on the opportunity for an MRH article. Next time...

However there's not much to it.

The locomotive uses 8 Warm White SMD LEDs, 4 for the ditch lights and 4 for the headlights. Each came prewired with magnetic wire along with a 1K Ohm resistor from Streamlined Backdrop Services. I wired up two LEDs each to the front and rear headlight functions on my Tsunami decoder. The ditch lights were wired to the F5 and F6 functions on the board. I wired both the fronts to F5 and the rears to F6 to give me control of the ditch lights independent of the headlights. Because of this I cannot have the ditch lights flash for grade crossings, however independent control was a higher priority.

The ditch lights are pilot mounted so I simply drilled into the shell and fished the LED through. A ditch light casting covers up the hole. Otherwise the LED simply sits in the middle of the casting.

Since the wire is so small I was able to attach it to the shell in some key locations with a little CA. However most of the wire is loose in the shell to allow for easy removal. If you look close at the front window on the engineer's side of the cab you can see a bit of the wire.

The direct link to the product I used is http://store.sbs4dcc.com/sbs4dcc0603smdwarmwhiteledpre-wired38gamagnetwire.aspx. I'm not affiliated with SBS, just a happy customer.

I rather wire my SMDs because I buy them at $.18 US each. I am just finishing adding front and rear ditch lights, front head lights, rear lights and adding QSI Titan sound. Which I had to mill out a 1.1" x 1/4" deep recessed in the fuel tank for one of the speakers. To a pair of Kato SD70MACs Conrail for a fellow Amherst Railway Society club member. All lights are SMD 603 and 403.

Joe

To each his own Joe. Do you have any pictures of the project you can share?

Do these work for rotary beacons and gyralites also?

Thomas G.