ESU lighting for passenger cars

 After my previous post, I did a bit more research and came across those two videos:

I found the neon effect, the red taillights, and the control of sections to be very valuable. The lighting kit has its own decoder, so compared to the previous solution, this allows for much more features.

List of components

ESU has several items for interior lighting:

• ESU 50708 - Digital LED lighting strip "warm-white"
• ESU 50709 - Digital LED lighting strip "yellow"

• ESU 50710 - PowerPack for LED lighting strip
• ESU 50707 - Power wheel pickup for LED lighting strip

• ESU 50705 - red taillights
• ESU 50704 - "warm-white" cabin light

By default, the ESU 50708 and 50709 come with red taillights, so ESU 50705 could be interesting for fret wagons. Both ESU 50708 and 50709 have an AUX output, which means that that decoder could control the driver cabin light with ESU 50704.

Power wheel pickup

ESU 50707 seems to work quite well, but there are alternative solutions. Probably, the easiest one is from Miniature Passion with kits specific for each type of cars:

• MP906 & MP906-2 for LS Models Corail cars
• MP902 for Roco UIC and Vitrains VB2N

Another option is explained in this video.

Digital LED lighting strip

The English documentation is here. I found the documentation a bit complex, and using the LokProgrammer makes it actually very easy. Here's what I've done to have the "Neon" effect"

I did the same adjustment to each group of LEDs and uploaded the settings into the decoder.

Here's a summary of the functions to call:

• F0 F0 turns on the red rear light (direction of travel)
• F1 switches the external load (AUX1)
• F2 switches all the LEDs together
• F3 switches the LEDs 1-3 (group A)
• F4 switches the LEDs 4-5 (group B)
• F5 switches the LEDs 6-7 (group C)
• F6 switches the LEDs 8-9 (group D)
• F7 switches the LEDs 10-11 (group E)

Here's the neon effect on my LED strip:

The next step is to decide between yellow and warm-white and then to mount those into my passenger cars:

• Lima & Jouef RIO Nord-Pas-de-Calais
• Trix & Märklin TEE
• Vitrains VB2N Nord-Pas-de-Calais
• LS Models Corail +
• Lima & Os.Kar M4 and M4m
• Electrotren TEE Talgo
• Models World MW1802
• LS Models Corail + Carmillon
• LS Models I11, I10, and I6
• Models World MW1702
• LS Models DB Sleeping cars
• LS Models M6