Adding red taillight to P.E. observation car?

My friend did this to a modern flyer Observation car and put in a 3mm flashing red LED from evans designs.  Piggy backed the wiring and it looks and works great...

Marty

I bought an eBay kit to do this on my O gauge observation car.  The original jewel lens is easily popped out with the tip of an Exacto knife blade tip. If I recall correctly, the hole is 1/16". The trick is to slightly angle the hole down so you don't punch a hole through the top of the car. I painted the inside of the hole flat black to ensure the light doesn't show through. 

I haven't done it yet, but the flashing tail light is scheduled for my PE observation, along with working marker lights.  I did this on a PRR set using "grain of sand" bulbs and a ginned up constant voltage circuit for the 1.5v bulbs.

It looks great in a darkened room!

I plan to do this when we get our S gauge PE set.  But it needs to be a steady red light.  If you want the movie where they are on the roof,  you can see the red beam shining rearwards and its just a steady red beam, not moving or flashing.  If it was a flashing light, it would have been a Mars or Gyralight style oscilating light in a heavyweight observation coach.  I am going with steady as that is how it looked in the few movie shots of the tail coach.  Really wish Lionel would do up proper add on's like the O scale line got like figures and more add on cars than the 2 they have done thus far.     Mike

artfull dodger posted: Really wish Lionel would do up proper add on's like the O scale line got like figures and more add on cars than the 2 they have done thus far.     Mike

 

The O gauge add-on cars are very nice. Lionel; since it hasn't been done yet, why not put the hobo on the S scale observation car like in the movie? Add the rear light and you'll have a real winner.

FWIW, I added this Dept 56 item to the roof of my PE cars.