Lighting experiments with the Hornby 2HAL EMU.

As posted elsewhere on the forum, I recently bought a Hornby 2HAL 2 car EMU after Hattons had reduced the price to a more realistic £60, but it's no match for any of the Bachmann EMU's, so I've set about trying to 'up-spec' it a bit. These units were apparently the 'cheap and cheerful' workhorses of the 'Southern', no posh seating or hardwood panelling in these units, so apart from painting the floors and compartment divisions, that's all I'm doing in the 'decorations' area. I've begun installing what is by now, my 'standard fit' internal lighting arrangement in the same manner as I've detailed in other posts on the subject, so I won't bother repeating myself on that, but I decided that it really needed the route indicator panels lit, and (thanks again for the info SRMan) a red oil lamp lit at whichever end becomes the rear. I have previously made a number of these red (and also white) 'oil lamps', so had some on stock, but had to think of a way to light the route boards. There's not much space between the drivers windows and the route board, so a compact solution was needed.......I reckoned that SMD LED's would be just the job, so here goes. First job was to remove the cab windows at each end. These are a one piece moulding with a clear area between them, so I cut this area out and cleaned up the individual windows for refixing, and while these were out of the way, drilled and filed out the black route board areas as below.

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Finding a few small bits of 'Veroboard' (others may know it as 'Stripboard' or 'Breadboard'), I cut two pieces 2 holes by 4 holes, so it's small and fiddly, especially if you've 'sausage fingers' like me! I used 2 'Warm White' 1206 SMD LED's and having tinned each side of the copper strips on the board, carefully melted the solder onto the edges of the SMD's, then added a 1K resistor to the +ve side, blue wire to this and a white wire to the -ve connection, all that was needed then was a length of heat shrink over resistor and wires as below, to secure everything ready for fixing into the rear of the central route indicator board hole. The pic below shows what I mean, temporarily lit with a battery.

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Just to see how things were looking, I took this pic whilst holding the board in place, connected to a battery, to see what the setup might look like.

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It seemed ok to me, so I went ahead and glued the two completed boards in place, once again lit to see what things looked like. Next step will be to look at fitting the red 'oil lamps' at each end. To be continued.

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I normally use "Warm White" LED's to light coaches etc where the original lighting would have been incandescent as opposed to fluorescent. They give much more of a yellow hue, whereas the "White" LED's have an almost blue tinge rather like fluorescent lighting. Anyway, to continue, the pic below shows my standard method of creating 'loco oil lamps'. I just take a 1.8mm 'block' type LED, and using either thin wire or thin flat brass strip (that sold as "Boiler banding" is quite ideal), form a tiny loop and superglue this over one end of the LED to form a 'carrying handle'. A dip into black paint, let dry then a dip into white paint, clean what will become the 'lens' area of the lamp, and that's it done. Reason for the black paint is to prevent any light spill from side or rear of the LED, white paint is just to finish the job. I make up a number of both Warm White and Red LED's into these 'oil lamps' so I have some to hand for jobs as needed. Two holes were drilled into the front of each cab end and the LED leads slid through, glued and left to set. When ready to continue, a 1K resistor is soldered onto the longer LED lead (+ve), and a yellow wire to the -ve lead, heat shrink applied and the leads dressed so that hopefully they are not visible in the cab from outside.

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This is what the inside of the cab area looks like with wiring in place.

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.......and once the wiring is 'blacked out'.

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Next job at the motor end, is to look at the possibility of adding a blue led to simulate 'sparking' at the third rail, so again using a 1206 type blue SMD LED, I soldered on blue to +ve, purple to -ve connections, heat shrunk the leads and superglued the LED into place behind the 'pickup shoe' area of the bogie. With this in place, after some fiddling about, I managed to thread the two thin leads through the bogie (away from the wheels!) ready for connecting at the decoder, so the underside looks like this.

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A dab or two of black paint, and the wiring then 'disappears'. I'm using a direct plug-in type decoder (Lais DCC again!) and keeping the standard 8 pin socket as supplied by Hornby. Unfortunately, and as is often the case with Hornby, they've not kept to the standard wiring colours for the motor, and 4 out of 8 connections on the 8 pin socket have no wiring on them, so I added correctly coloured output wires to the socket, avoiding any confusion when I come to connect up. Here's where most of the wiring ends up, hopefully just enough room above the motor or between motor and the carriage 'bulkhead' to connect carriage lights plus front and rear lamps and route indicator boards. It'll likely be a tight squeeze, but should be do-able! To be continued.

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Getting near to completion now, and also to the more awkward bit, that of connecting up and squeezing everything in, whilst still managing to fit the body back on! It's more awkward because due to feeding 5 wires from driving coach to trailing coach, they are now connected permanently together, a bit like some loco/tender combinations, but longer. It might be possible to use a 5 pin miniplug to do this, but it'd have to be very 'mini' 'cos there ain't much room between the coaches, so I opted for a permanent connection, which means you have to upend both coaches (glad my cradle is long enough to hold both coaches firmly!) whilst soldering the final joints and heat sleeving them. It's necessary to keep the connections as short as possible due to lack of space, but this also makes connecting more difficult, but it's do-able. With the coaches in the cradle, I placed the driving bogie chassis close alongside whilst soldering and insulating the joints, as below.

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With joints completed, it's now time to dress the wires into positions where they won't stop body from clipping back onto the chassis, patience (and no big hammers!) required here! Once that's done, it's onto the rolling road to set up the decoder. Front and rear lighting is switched on/off by the "0" button, directionally controlled by the decoder, button "1" switches both coach interior lights on/off, and button '2" switches the blue SMD LED fitted behind the pickup shoe, this being pre-programmed using the CV setting normally used for firebox flicker on steam loco's. Try as I might, I can't get my iPhone camera to focus correctly on the external lights, as they just seem to blur, especially the route indicator boards, even though I've dimmed the LED's somewhat in the CV settings, but hopefully you'll get the gist of the completed article......maybe some weathering to round it off??? Rear lighting first.

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Then going forwards.

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.......and finally, coach lighting on.

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I've not attempted to photograph the blue flickering LED behind the pickup shoe, but suffice to say I'm quite satisfied with the effect, and it's switchable.Not sure if I could make it so that it only worked with the unit actually in motion in either direction, as so far I've not been able to find that ability in the CV programming, further research needed there, unless anyone else knows differently. At least I've proved that it's a worthwhile project, and something I'll look at when I finally get around to looking at my Bachmann 4CEP units in which some of the internal lighting has 'died'. Good job I've got more SMD LED's 'in stock', just need more time and patience!!

Keith.

 

Hornby are the one decoder I've no intention of using Steve, the one in this unit is a LaisDCC 4 function one, direct plug-in with pretty much all the functions of the more expensive ones ( but only a tenner!). It fits perfectly under the 'seat' area but there's precious little room left for wiring, hence the need to cram it in either above the motor or between motor and bulkhead, and it was a TIGHT fit.

Keith.