40 http://www.ModelRailroader.com
cabooses have metal wheels and metal
trucks, so it was easy to modify a truck
to pick up power from one rail. I drilled
and tapped a hole for a 00-90 brass screw
in the sideframe. Then I soldered a wire
from the top of the screw that ran to the
lighting circuit.
For plastic truck sideframes with
metal wheelsets, I fabricated a wiper
from brass strip. Then I attached the
wiper to the bolster, making sure thatthe wiper pressed against one of the
metal axles. I could then solder the wire
from the circuit board to the wiper. One
of my finished cabooses with modified
plastic trucks is shown in photo ❷ on
the previous page.
Another ready-made option is avail-
able from Kadee Quality Products
(www.kadee.com), also shown in photo
❷. The firm sells HO scale caboose
trucks pre-wired for track power pickup.Room preparation
Since the layout backdrop covers the
windows, my basement train room is
devoid of outside light. A wall switch
next to the door controls the overhead
aisle lighting, and I have flashlights
handy in case of a power outage.
A master switch on the main control
panel turns layout overhead lighting on
or off. These lights are behind a valence
that I installed above the entire layout.
For my new operating scheme, my
goal was to slowly dim the lights as night
approached. However, I’d converted the
lights to compact fluorescent lamp (CFL)
fixtures several years ago, and these
CFLs aren’t dimmable. I purchased 14
LED fixtures and an LED-compatible
dimmer switch to replace the CFLs. To
my chagrin, I failed to read the LED box
labels and purchased non-dimmable
LEDs, so I headed back to the hardware
store to get LEDs that would work with
the dimmer.
Once I turned off both the aisle lights
and the layout lights, it was too dark to
run trains, even with the hundreds of
structure and exterior lights on the rail-
road. Having 10 to 12 people moving❺ Exterior lamps. A 4-8-2 Mountain
type rolls through Wakefield, the
largest city on the V&W. The trackside
billboard is illuminated by 1.5V bulbs
with lampshades. These lamps also work
well above structure doorways or as
streetlights mounted on telephone
poles. Paul J. Dolkos photo❹ Miller Engineering signs. The animated HOTEL sign from Miller Engineering
includes its own driver board to program different effects. Doug modified the
board to work with his power bus instead of the included battery holder. The sign
is also visible in the photo above.Driver
boardSign