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Review of the Minatronics Constant Car Lighting

by Don Fiehmann

Please note: This review covers 2 products and everything discussed applies to both. Miniatronics "100-ICL-01" which is for newer passenger cars and cabooses that are lighted with fluorescent lights, and Miniatronics "100-YCL-01" which is for older passenger cars and cabooses that are lighted with incandescent lights. Don was using 100-YCL-01 for this review.

It was a dark and stormy night, off in the distance the rumble of a mighty train could be heard pounding its way up the canyon. Fighting every inch of the way up the grade, one tie and a time. The thundering sound of the mighty engine grew louder. As the engine rounded the curve, the stead light of the headlight cut thru the darkness like a polished hot silver knife thru butter. Then, its load of heavy weight passenger cars came into view. The lights in the passenger cars were flashing and blinked on and off. Flashing and blinking car lights! Those @#$% blinking lights destroyed the whole scene and is not very prototypical.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel

It has always bugged me to see a fine looking string of passenger cars rolling along the mainline with the lights flickering on and off. The common solution to correct this problem is to clean the rails and wheels or use some form of track slider for better electrical pickup. These help, but never seem to totally solve the problem. One solution to keep the lighting steady is to store energy in the car to supply power during the time that power is lost due to poor wheel and rail contact. Energy can be stored in batteries or capacitors. Here is where modern technology can step in and help. Two recent developments that can work together to make a workable solution are white LEDs and super capacitors.

Electronic Solutions

LEDs are now available in a very small size and in a color that closely matches incandescent lights. LEDs also use very little current. Match this up with the new super capacitors and you have the formula for a car light the can continue to operate with unsteady power. Miniatronics has come out with a new light system for passenger cars that uses both LEDs and a super capacitor. The LEDs are mounted on a printed circuit board that is 10 inches long and only 3/8's inches wide. There are seven LEDs and they are separated with notches on the board that let you snap off LEDs if the board is too long. This allows you to customize the board to fit into shorter cars. In addition to the LEDs, the 0.3 farad super capacitor, a 5 volt regulator and bridge rectifier are mounted on one end of the board. Each of the LEDs has its own surface mount resistor.

Pick up wire installed and routed to the bolster screw.
Then connected on the inside of the car.

The light bar gets its power from the rails. The voltage can run on from near 5 volts on up to 18 volts. This makes it usable for DC or DCC power. When power is first applied, the lights turn on even as the capacitor is charging. The power starts at about 80 milliamps for the seven LEDs and, in a few minutes, as the capacitor charges, the current drops to below 45 milliamps. When power is removed, the lights stay on for up to four minutes.

Rail power is picked up thru the car’s trucks and wheels. Miniatronics provides a couple of pieces of bronze wires with a hook on end. The hooked end is designed to fit over an axle and then form the other end around the other axle. The power pick up wire is soldered to the bronze wire.

Test Installation

To test out the light bar I check it out on the bench and found that the light comes on at 4.5 volts and was OK up to 18 volts. The LEDs got to full light output at about 7 volts. Next the bar was mounted in the inside top of an Athearn passenger car. This car is 80 feet long, and required that one of the LEDs be snapped off to shorten the light bar. A second light bar was installed in an old brass observation car. The light bars were attached to the top of the cars with double backed foam tape.

The light bar can be shortened to fit into shorter cars.
A red flashing LED was installed on the top of the copula.
A 510 ohm resistor was needed in series with the red LED.

The wheels were replaced in the Athearn with Intermountain 36 inch wheels and the bronze wire installed on the axles. I did find that the bronze wire should be on the bottom of the center axle on a three axle truck. When I put it on the top of the axle, it pushed the axle slightly down and caused the other two axle to be slightly higher and had a tendency to derail. With the wire on the bottom, there was no derail problem. The wire should not be to tight on the axles or they will drag or not rotate. With the wires installed, the cars did not roll as well as without the pickup wires. A wire was run up thru the bottom of the car to the light bar.

The brass car had metal trucks. On this car I put a 4-40 screw in from the bottom of the truck up thru the bolster and then picked up the power inside the car.

On one of the cars I installed a two pin connector so the frame and shell could be separated without the wires. I used the Miniatronics two wire connector.

Light bars with LED on.

When DCC power is applied to the rails, the lights come on instantly. There was no visible change in the light level as the capacitor charged. When running on the layout the light stayed on with a slight change in light level when the track contact was broken. But the light remains on, even when the layout power is turned off. For DC operation this means you can stop at a station and have the lights in the passenger cars remain on.

The first time I shutdown for the night and turned the room lights off, I was surprised to see the lights still on in the passenger cars.