Are all passenger car light kits DCC Compatible?

I bought some older Passenger Cars with light kits on eBay and it occurred to me that I might have a problem because I have DCC.

I never thought of it before and I’ve been running Kato Passenger car with Kato kits and my NCE PowerCab has tripped many times, but I don’t know if was just because of the extra load or if it’s something else,

 

I hope you get an answer as I have the same question. I currently do not use DCC, but am hoping to soon and wondered about my Walther's lighting kits and how they will respond.

 

Thanks, I guess I’ll be looking a couple of light kits because they do appear to be regular lamps.

 

I was noticing that the lights weren’t exactly right in my Kato Passenger cars so went through my paper work and discovered that I have the Kato 11-206 light kits which are not the LED ones. Rather than buy new light kits I would like to modify them for LEDs.
I can’t remember exactly how to do this, but I think I just need a resister and some LEDs. Is that right and is there any special LEDs that I should consider?

 

Probably more trouble than starting over with either battery powered (Rapido Easy Peasy) or the Kato LED kits.
LED's and resistors are expensive if purchased through normal model railroad channels.
Less if purchased through Digikey or Mouser.

 

Thanks, I guess I need to think about it some ore. I stated to buy the Easy Peasy and changed my mind. I just have a problem with batteries and I know there has been a ton of discussion about it, but having to turn each car on just brothers me.

 

Easy-Peasy has one big advantage...no flicker. Other than that Kato makes the best for track power. You can also buy strips here:
Trains & Components at the Shop at TrainAidsA.com and at other supply houses. I would not use anything with a bulb for DCC.


Steve E.

 

I tore out all my Kato lights (9 cars worth) and replaced them with Rapido lights. The flicker got to me eventually, and unless you've got a capacitor built in there, there's no easy solution. Right out of the box the Kato lights and cars work, but unless you keep everything squeaky clean, it's going to flicker. Cleaning passenger car wheels is way more annoying than turning lights on.

The Kato light units (with 10 or more bulbs on DC) also had a lot more current draw than I realized, as when I took them off it removed about half an amp off the ammeter. The other problem I got rid of was the reverse loop issues where the entire train had to be through a reversing section before polarity could be swapped, and if you missed one car....BANG....down you went. If you have a reversing section in DCC I think you might also get into some issues as long as you are drawing track power to anything that can bridge the section, and the passenger cars do all of that.

I've got to the point where I snap the car lights on the Rapidos while the train is coming out of the first tunnel, in the dark, by waving the wand. If I wanted to get really high-tech I'm sure this could be automated or done with electromagnets.

I'd never go back to pulling track power through wheel contacts again, that's for sure. Nine constantly lit cars with no flicker is a beautiful, beautiful sight.

I'd tried doing PFM micro-lites (1.5V bulbs on AAA batteries in the baggage car and diner kitchen) back in the 70's, with between the car wires....so compared to that, this is pretty elegant!

 

The Kato units with the leds draw very little current, so you shouldn't have any problems with them tripping the over current detection in your Power Cab. If you buy them in the 6 pack (11210) they run about $5.00 apiece ($30 for the 6 pack).

Also, they won't cause any problems with DCC reverse loops controlled by an auto reverser. The auto reverser will set the track to the polarity of the track the train is entering from when the engine crosses the entrance gap and doesn't switch to the polarity of the exit track until the engine crosses the exit gap. As long as the distance between the entrance and exit gap are longer then the longest train it works fine.

As far as the light flickering, a couple of my sound decoders usually start acting up before I notice any flickering in the passenger car lights. So if I keep the track clean enough for the sound to work, the lights are fine.

 

So I checked out the Easy Peasy to see where the switch was located and now that I see it’s magnetic, it’s not so bad. I thought I had to remove the car from the track to turn it on. As soon as I saw the wand I remembered that I did know that but forgot.

So they are a little more expensive than the Kato at $5 each, but is there an advantage to installing the Easy Peasy over the Kato.

I’m going to need at least 25 of them. And probably even more if I can put them in my Metrolink cars. biggrin: