MTH Buildings W/Christmas Lights

My guess is you'll need to open up the buildings and separate the Christmas light circuit from the interior lights.  Sample of 1 but the first MTH Christmas building I looked at says:

In other words disconnect/cut a wire and re-route it to a new terminal on each building.  So rather than 2 wires/contacts per building, you'd have 3 wires/contacts.  You could connect all the new 3rd wires together so a single ASC2 port could turn on all the Christmas lights.

If you choose to proceed and can post of photo of the wiring, I'm sure one of us can give you exact instructions on what to do.

stan2004 posted:

My guess is you'll need to open up the buildings and separate the Christmas light circuit from the interior lights.  Sample of 1 but the first MTH Christmas building I looked at says:

In other words disconnect/cut a wire and re-route it to a new terminal on each building.  So rather than 2 wires/contacts per building, you'd have 3 wires/contacts.  You could connect all the new 3rd wires together so a single ASC2 port could turn on all the Christmas lights.

If you choose to proceed and can post of photo of the wiring, I'm sure one of us can give you exact instructions on what to do.

Thanks. When I get them I'll peak at one and post pictures. 

I have some of these buildings and they look great...but beware...the wires are very thin, short and a bit on the flimsy side. And I mean the internal wiring, not the external LEDs. Although those should be handled with care, too.  

johnstrains posted:

I have some of these buildings and they look great...but beware...the wires are very thin, short and a bit on the flimsy side. And I mean the internal wiring, not the external LEDs. Although those should be handled with care, too.  

Can you post some photos of the inside? 

Trainlover9943 posted:

johnstrains posted:

I have some of these buildings and they look great...but beware...the wires are very thin, short and a bit on the flimsy side. And I mean the internal wiring, not the external LEDs. Although those should be handled with care, too.  

Can you post some photos of the inside? 

Sure, be glad to. Although I have to say that unlike many here we don't put our Christmas layout up shortly after Halloween  (sorry, couldn't resist). They are packed away with the other Xmas stuff but I'll get some shots posted.

johnstrains posted:

Trainlover9943 posted:

johnstrains posted:

I have some of these buildings and they look great...but beware...the wires are very thin, short and a bit on the flimsy side. And I mean the internal wiring, not the external LEDs. Although those should be handled with care, too.  

Can you post some photos of the inside? 

Sure, be glad to. Although I have to say that unlike many here we don't put our Christmas layout up shortly after Halloween  (sorry, couldn't resist). They are packed away with the other Xmas stuff but I'll get some shots posted.

Thanks! I'd just like to see the wiring and circuits in the building and of course the thing lit up. 

Good luck getting into some of these buildings without destruction.  You might get lucky that the exterior lights plug into a board that has the current limiting resistors.  In other words you may need to do some circuit tracing to insure that the leds can be safely lit by  itself.  Or maybe cut the hot side (non-common side) wire of the exterior lights and splice a wire pair cable and run it to your control unit.

Clear as mud, eh.

Difficult to see but the feed wires are soldered to the light bulb socket. 2 wires then supply the led power supply board. (Marked with white paint. )

Probably be easiest to clip the board supply wires close to the bulb socket and solder on extensions to the wires. 

wmcwood posted:

Difficult to see but the feed wires are soldered to the light bulb socket. 2 wires then supply the led power supply board. (Marked with white paint. )

Probably be easiest to clip the board supply wires close to the bulb socket and solder on extensions to the wires. 

Thanks for the picture. It'll help a lot. Its beyond me why they used a bulb and not LEDs in the interior light. While I'm in there I'll convert it to LEDs.