[1goofyguy]

Hey all,
I was sent to your forum by Bachmann itself. I have a question on how to go about changing/replacing or even removing the lights in a Bachmann Lighted Passenger Car or Combo. How is it done? I have two separate passenger cars needing lighting work. One with a bad/burned out light, and the other I want to temporarily remove lights.

I disassembled my second car; took off the bottom, removed tiny screws on wiring, removed the seats, removed the windows (bought the car used, and someone painted it poorly, including the windows that I now need to clean up), and removed the roof screws. Now I can't seem to be able to figure out how to get the lights out of the roof section, so the roof is still attached via wiring, and I'm afraid I'll break something.

As I said, someone painted over the entire car, windows and all, so I want to remove the lights to clean up and repaint the car. Then put lights back in, populate the car, and reassemble everything. I watched an awesome video series on YouTube where a passenger car was disassembled, lettering removed, repainted, reassembled, and looked awesome, but the car had no interior lighting, so I'm kinda stuck as to how to proceed further. Hmm, maybe someone could do a video on disassembling a passenger car with interior lighting, for repainting, or light replacement, as it's similar but different than disassembling one without lights. Anyone have any tips, tricks, tutorials, directions, comments, etc. on how this can be done? Bachmann sent me to you, as they don't seem to have instructions, diagrams, or much info on their passenger cars.

 

[on30gn15]

Oh dear, been so long since I have done that on mine I don't remember, other than desoldering or cutting is indeed necessary. And I removed the factory lighting on all but 2 cars in order to install LED to my own plan, which remains to be done.
The 2 cars still having factory lighting are buried in a box.
Let's see if anyone replies in the next day if not I'll dig them out open them up and figure it out again.

 

[Cataptrra]

Been a very long while since I did mine too, but I thought the ones I had had small screws holding the lighting fixture in place, removed the screws and it just came out, light sockets and all. So don't recall it being too hard to remove. But you do have to unsolder or cut wires and then resolder or replace the wiring.

I removed the sockets and replaced with White L.E.D.'s and converted to be able to use either track power+battery power or battery only operation.

However, under track power, the 9V battery was still connected, as I used a rechargeable 9V battery in the original Bachmann battery holder, but added a charging circuit so that when running on track power, the battery charged and when the train stopped, the lights would still be on as the 9V battery took over.

Replaced the original switch with a center off, so that one position was battery only, opposite position of the switch was the charging circuit and 9V rechargeable battery that got charged as the train ran off track power, this kept the lights on and from flickering on dirty or bad track.

Don't recall the charging circuit I used off hand, but it's one I found on-line somewhere and implemented it into my L.E.D. lighting upgrade. I think the search option I used at the time for the charging circuit was "charging circuit for 9V rechargeable battery".

 

[choochoowilly]

Why not discard the old lighting system and redo with LED's, I did mine battery power and everything is hidden in the clearstory roof, depending on how much you run at night determines how long the batteries last but I will tell you I accidently

left mine on for a week and they were still lit when I found it.

 

[Cataptrra]

I left an LGB Circus passenger car and a F.R.E.D. on an LGB caboose that I modified to have one permanently installed on the rear on for somewhere between 2-4 years.

Didn't know I forgot to turn them off when I put them in a tote for long term storage for a while.

Opened the totes up just a few months ago and the lights were all still operating at almost full brightness, I'd guess they were probably operating at around 85-90% in the passenger car and the F.R.E.D. was still operating 100% normally and at full brightness.

The F.R.E.D. is specifically battery operated off a 9V battery and a 1K resistor. I was shocked to see they were still working when I pulled those out to run them again.