Walthers Help

[jlwii2000]

Does anyone know if the recent Walthers Proto LED lighted passenger cars are flicker free or not?

Thanks!

[Deleted]

No, they do not have any capacitor on them. I have upgraded some interiors in some of the new cars for a customer and the lights work well....better than the old light boards. However, they will still go off as soon as power is lost.

Keith Turley
Monrovia, California

[mlehman]

They're not Walthers, but the BLI CZ cars turned out to be easy to add a capacitor to once I looked into things a bit. Thread is here: Dimming & Constant Lighting in BLI CZ California Zephyr Cars

So long as you have a little room to put it, adding a capacitor is mainly about throwing it across the power leads to the lighting. You'll need no more than 47 uF and probably a lot less, so it can be small. If there's not a lot of space and even the smaller standard capacitor's won't fit, then Ngineering has some that are really small: link

[jlwii2000]

Thanks guys. I just ordered some Walthers Cities UP passenger cars and had the option to change the order to the cars with interior lighting. If it's not flicker free it's not worth my time and the $10 extra per car.

[riogrande]

Your call but how many passenger cars are flicker free out of the box? Are any? At least the major work is done and the mod is rather simple with the capacitor as Mike pointed out.

[jlwii2000]

Apr 17, 2014 14:56:14 GMT -8 riogrande said:

Your call but how many passenger cars are flicker free out of the box? Are any? At least the major work is done and the mod is rather simple with the capacitor as Mike pointed out.

Actually MTH and BLI recent releases of passenger cars are all flicker free with built in capacitors at lower price points than the Walthers cars. Rapido's are as well but they're not track powered they're battery powered.

[WP 257]

The Athearn Genesis SP lightweights are also flicker free, if I recall correctly--and one other thing Athearn did that is really cool is they varied the interior colors on their cars to match prototype interiors, which varied--so with the lights, they are actually quite impressive. I know there's times I'm critical--but Athearn did a tremendous job on their SP/T&NO lightweights!!

[gmpullman]

I have a few of the Walther's cars with "pre-installed" lighting. Other than the convenience of having "instant gratification" to have a lighted car right out of the box there are still a few negatives. My first purchase was Chessie Club and I found the lighting to be extremely intense so it sticks out in a consist of other lit cars as too bright, plus it illuminates all the stuff in the interior that you DON'T want to see, namely the acetate window moldings and wall attachment clips and such.

So, you still have to populate the interior with HO amputees and as long as you have to pry the roof off anyway, you're just as well off to add your own lighting and stay-alive circuitry.

Another downside to factory lighting, IMO, is that in 10-6 or 13 BR cars (diners and other room cars also) the aisle doesn't get any light from the centered LEDs so you still want to do some tweaking there as well.

I was really surprised when I broke down and bought the MTH Century and Empire State Express cars. Overall, these cars are nearly perfect, well detailed, they ROLL beautifully, interiors are on a par with the BLIs, maybe even a tad better and the lighting is the best I've ever seen in a RTR car! AND they're simple to open by removing the FLOOR so you don't have to break off the retaining clips and risk not getting the roof back on properly as I've experienced with some of my Walthers cars.
With the capacitor circuit MTH uses the cars stay lit a good 20 seconds or so and slowly fade away for up to a minute!!!
More than I had expexted from 'ol Mike.

Take care, Ed