Headlight wiring options

[garethashenden]

I’m interested in everyone’s thoughts on best practice for dealing with wires to lights.

Small LEDs are often available prewired. If I use these is it better to attach the LED to the shell and leave the wires long or cut the wires to length and somehow hope that it will end up in the right place? I see advantages and disadvantages to both of these, and ditch lights much be even more problematic. With all the lighting effects available with DCC it seems that there is a potential rats nest of wires under the shell. What are the best ways of dealing with this?

[woodone]

Mount the LED’s into the loco and attach wires from the decoder to the wires with a micro plug and socket.
That will let you separate the shell from the mechanical part.
Keep the wires neat, no need for a rats nest!

[ednadolski]

... with a micro plug and socket. ...

Any specific examples of these kinds of parts?

Thx,
Ed

[nickelplate759]

TCS sells them.
http://tcsdcc.com/accessories/connectors


I think NCE does too, but I can't find it on their mess of a web site.

[garethashenden]

TCS sells them.
http://tcsdcc.com/accessories/connectors


I think NCE does too, but I can't find it on their mess of a web site.

Those aren’t exactly small. They’re a 1/4” long, and I don’t really see fitting several to the inside of an N scale locomotive. I’m sure I could make them fit, but I’d have to remove so much material that it wouldn’t be able to pull anything.

[nickelplate759]

Peteski has done some clever things using bronze  wipers attached to the loco frame to power LED's mounted on the body.  Look through some of his posts.

[Lemosteam]

This works well too.  In this case I did not have to insulate with shrink wrap, but the connection on the right is nothing more than a 0.008" PB wire bent in half, and the LED lead on the right is a piece of brass tubing that is 1mm in outside diameter.  The PB wire still has some spring left on it to force the tube over and stay connected.  If you were to do two shrink wrapped tubes glue them together side by side, and shrink wrap that,  with paint for polarity markling, you would essentially have a female plug for the bent PB wire to pop into.  I have done this but not for the same purpose you are doing.