Model Railroading > DCC Lighting on Kato Biz Car?

I'm curious if anyone out there has wired 'ditch lights' for DCC in a passenger car? I am working on my Great Lakes Eastern track geometry train and would like to wire in rear-facing lights like are seen on many inspection/theater cars. My goal is to be able to wire up the lighting to work via DCC, however I am fairly a novice at DCC and would be interested in hearing how to make this work? The car in question will be a KATO business car... Any suggestions or ideas?? I have attached an image of the CPR track geometry car with more lights than I desire to replicate...however it shows the basis for my idea.

Kevin B.
Great Lakes Eastern Railroad (in HO Scale)
http://greatlakeseastern.net

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8 head light's that will blind a gofer 2 feet down LoL. I will have to wach this post as i have a car i may do to .

How many lights do you intend to put. This is fairly easy to do in any case, you will simply have to install a decoder and wire the lights only, no need to use the orange and gray wire, now the question is how many lights, you will have to kept the total amp of the bulbs used under the decoder max one probably 1 Amp, so I would suggest .15 amp bulbs, so you could have up to 6 ( 4 at the bottom and one in each top corner ( to have more you probably would have to used fiber optic and used a bigger buld inside the car.)

Charls - I am anticipating only two operating sets - the lower level. The upper level would likely be replicated or maybe not even installed. I might be interested in adding the single red marker light. I guess another question to pose is whether or not to use LEDs or actual bulbs?

Kevin B.
Great Lakes Eastern Railroad (in HO Scale)
http://greatlakeseastern.net

Kevin,

I have one of the Kato business cars that I run on a DCC layout. The built in red marker light works with analog or DCC. Just mentioning this in case you were unaware that the markers on the car are functional.

Bob

KevinB Wrote:
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> Charls - I am anticipating only two operating sets
> - the lower level. The upper level would likely
> be replicated or maybe not even installed. I
> might be interested in adding the single red
> marker light. I guess another question to pose is
> whether or not to use LEDs or actual bulbs?
>
> Kevin B.
> Great Lakes Eastern Railroad (in HO Scale)
> http://greatlakeseastern.net

Personally, I'd use LED's, brighter, no heat, and they won't burn out. But its up to you. Either LED's or 1.5 volt bulbs will need an appropriate resistor to drop the voltage. I'm assuming you want to be able to turn the lights on and off, I'd recommend a TCS FL2 function decoder.

Barry Draper

This would be a good use of those blue white BMW style LED's!
Clarence

I put a TCS FL decoder in the observation car for my Cal Zephyr (BLI Cars) I can work the mars, and markers separately....Joe