A week ago I posted in the High-Rail, O-27, and Traditional 3-Rail Forum about my K-Line passenger car seats and LED lighting modifications ... https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...seats-and-passengers
At the end of that post, I commented about the tiny incandescent lamps in the observation car for drumhead and marker lights ... about how I had not yet decided how I would deal with them. I subsequently read a 2017 OGR post where both GRJ and Stan2004 offered their ideas for dealing with retrofit of LEDs for both drumhead and marker lights on observation cars ... https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...r-led-lighting-again These gave me a good idea of what to do.
So, I'll offer some words and photos of what I did in event others might benefit from yet another approach. I removed the original K-line incandescent printed circuit board along with the tiny incandescent bulbs used for drumhead and marker lights. With the marker light tiny incandescent bulbs removed, there was an ~1/8 inch diameter hole in the side of the shell that was just big enough for me to insert the LED portion of an individual LED left over from a purchase of some pre-wired warm white SMD 3528 individual LEDS some months ago used for scenic building lighting. So all I had to do was insert the nearly square-shaped LED element into the marker light holes and hot glue the substrate of the LED to the inside of the passenger car shell. For the drumhead, I had to disassemble the rear end of the observation car, remove the end railing surrounding the drumhead, then drill a hole in the back of the drumhead large enough to insert another single LED element to illuminate the drumhead. Again used hot glue to hold the LED substrate against the back of the drumhead with the LED element inserted into the just-drilled-hole. I made a wiring harness by soldering the three single LED light connecting wires to a single JST connector which, in turn, is powered by the end of the overall passenger car LED light strip as used in all four of my K-line passenger cars.
Photos follow. First photo shows one of the individual LEDs mounted on inside of passenger car with LED element inserted into the marker light 1/8 inch diameter access hole. Photo 2 shows drumhead disassembled ... original tiny incandescent bulb in middle of photo. Photos 3 and 4 show the individual LED illuminated beside (photo 3) and into (photo 4) drumhead. Photo 5 shows exposed power setup ... LED light strip in middle, GRJ LED voltage regulator on right, my custom JST-connected wiring harness for the drumhead/marker lights on left. In the upper left of this photo, one can see the lead wires going into the now assembled rear end of the observation car with the drumhead installed with its individual LED already mounted.
Regards,
Tom
