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 I finally took the tank out of the box and set it on the RR. I hooked it up to several other buildings on some maybe 20 gauge wire. It's connected to the 14 volt (AC) output on my MTH Z4000. Most of the buildings in the town look OK. The Lionel O'Grady's Tavern even looks good.

This Sunoco tank's lights seem very dim. I didn't get a manual so I went to the Lionel site.

https://www.lionelsupport.com/...OilTanksCCEB7FEA.pdf

It says it will run from 12 to 18 volts? So I'm thinking that I may have the smaller buss wire overtaxed? I took it over to the Z4000 and went to hook it up. I got a fear that I might cook it? The wires are very thin. Are all these lights wired in parallel? Seems like a lot of current? Should I up the volts to 18?

It entered my mind to convert this to LEDs but that's a lot of work. I think it would be well worth it? I may convert everything else so that they don't suck up so much power. This is the third power source I have around the layout just on lighting.

So I want to ask if someone else has this are the lights bright? & How are you powering it?

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OK, great ....

It hit me to see what voltage is getting over to this item. The output of the Z4000 14 volt accessory is 12.7 right at the transformer. By the time it gets over to the tank after all the other items, it's only 9.x!

 I did try a test last night disconnecting other items to see if this got brighter. I just forgot to use the tester to see what power it's getting.

So I will connect it directly to a transformer and see what it looks like. Thanks for the help. 

How about temporarily hooking up the tank lights to one of the Z4K's track output connections (instead of the accessory output) and putting a meter on the connection at the lights and push the handle up slowly until you get the desired lighting effect - making sure the wires don't get too hot and then finding a power source that puts out the same voltage as shown on the meter when it gets to just the right brightness for you.

FWIW, I travel by a tank farm in East Boston and the lights on the tanks are not what I would call "bright" - prototypically, just bright enough so low flying aircraft can see them (not too far from Logan). However, for our train purposes, we probably want the lights a little brighter to show off the tank and the name on the side.

Seems they like around 17 volts AC better for me. I don't mind them dim. Just not so much that they look different than other structures they're next to. I have the MTH tank car unloading platform tied together with the tank. I think I need to have each on it's own power. The MTH is very bright at 17 volts. I could lower that one to get them at a more even brightness.

 When I convert to LEDs, I add an adjustable dimmer control to them. So in this case, I could fine tune each structure's lighting.

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