So it all started with my work. A job which took me up to Fort William via Crianlarich, in September 2020 had me travel up in my van. Luckily, it was my winning visit and I was able to catch a “very well weathered” Network Rail MPV awaiting in the sidings.
Had it been a coincidence I'd recently bought one and had big ideas about fitting DCC sound to it? I think so. I had the cracking idea of fitting the working lighting to it previously, but didn't know how to go about. So it was sidelined until I had seen this in person and just knew I had to do it.
So, with the seed planted in my head, I still wasn't sure if I'd be able to pull it off and make it worth doing, so I went onto ‘Wish/Ebay’ and bought a few sets of these nano LED’s. Also a set of resistors from Amazon for when they arrived.
All reasonably cheap, although there was the 4-6 weeks delivery time to be expected.
They Arrived!!! It wasn't long before I took the plunge and started drilling some very small holes, for the nano LED wire to fit through at each floodlight position on the unit. Thankfully each module could be separated so the wiring was made easier. You'll see from the picture above that I couldn't resist and had them hooked up to a 3V watch battery. Seeing it all lit up had me most definitely spurred on!
After fitting a brand new Loksound V5, with Legomanbiffo sounds for the MPV. I wired up the lighting to one of the function wires from the decoder. With it tucked all away nicely, the finishing touches being some dots of super glue to hold it all down. Since I found the alignment dowels weren't holding the modules down reliably enough.
The trailing car has a 4-way coupling that carries track power and lighting power…however I used a spare 8pin decoder I had and this was tapped into the pickup wires , which in turn then powered the floodlighting on the trailing car. A bit of CV remapping and all is a winner.
Definitely worth the modification!!!
Complete
And then she was complete! Or at least until she was weathered by one of our club members James.
I hope this has inspired you to take on the modification. Definitely a cracking sound recording, and the lights were cheap to fit.
