Think I might be 3RS'ing now. Building a caboose

Oh, boy...my favorite caboose, the CM's with the side door and reverse curve roofed cupola.  Done in brass in HO (of course), I do need to get around to building a couple.

Will watch your progress and want to see your finished effort.

great post keep building, to me thats what the hobby is about!

Excellent !

Ron H

"Trying to figure out a way to light it right now."

....I have a suggestion.  I used this combination/technique on a Quality Craft B&O caboose I built last year.

I decided to ditch the idea of picking up power from the track (O3R) and go with battery power.   Adding that third rail pickup to an apporpriate set of O2R trucks (work fine on Gargraves/Ross track) for this model was not an easy thing to work through.  Also, I decided that my primary lighting focus would be on the marker lights, rather than cabin lighting.  The latter would've led me to interior detailing....something that was not a priority for a kit-built car at this time.  I felt that well lit marker lights would give me the best night running effect, anyway.

So, I started with an Evans Design item...Walthers item 266-3vFRED.  Here's the link...

3VFRED Link

The essential features of this item for me were the battery clip and the in-line on-off switch.  (BTW, the on-off switch does not show up well or at all in the link photo.  It's white in color.  Against the white background of the photo it doesn't show!!  It's located between the two black connection points in the center of the photo.)

The switch is a push on-push off button.  I mounted mine to extend through the midpoint of the floor near one side.

I clipped off the red 1.8mm LED, of course.  In its place I attached the leads to a set of Tomar marker lights...

Marker Light Link

This marker light set has some other components, such as a diode rectifier, but I saved them for a future job.  The important items were the pre-wired lights with nano LED's that operate at the 3volt level of the Evans Design harness.

Long story short, the lighting/circuit works really well.  Of course, it has a couple concessions to the more traditional 3-rail pickup.  First, you have to manually actuate the light switch....not a biggie for me.  Besides, it offered a secondary benefit!...I can display the caboose on a shelf and power up the marker lights for added effect in a darkened room without having to have a powered display track!

The second concession is the battery.  Talking with Tomar, the CR2032 battery should last a long time, even powering the two nano LEDs.  But it will run down eventually...especially if I forget to turn the lights off when done!!!  So you'll have to face getting into the car to replace the battery.  On my QC caboose, I made one whole side removable, held on with six 3/16" dia. Neodymium magnets.  Works great.  But there's probably dozens of ways to deal with this issue.  More creativity.

Anyway, that's how I dealt with the lighting issue.  If you really wanted cabin lighting in addition to....or instead of...marker lights, I suppose you could experiment with the Evans harness/battery/switch arrangement further. 

Just a suggestion....FWIW, always.

KD