Interior lighting of RIO Nord-Pas-de-Calais - part 9

 

I already know that the 2mm tower white LEDs from Miniatronics fit nicely in the holes for the white lights. I thought I would use the similar LEDs in red, but one issue is that they look clear whereas in reality they have to look red even when not lighted. Then, I thought I'd tried those that come with the ESU lighting strip ... and it looks like a success!

First step is to file the LED to make it fit into the 1.5mm hole - left side, original & right side, sanded:

Dry fitting test:

And how it looks on the driving side ... Perfect!

So, a good start so far, but let's put the cabin and see how much room we have for the LEDs and wires. As shown below, this is very tight, almost impossible!

As a side note, the cabin is not light-proof as there is a big gap by the roof. I'll need to fix that once I put the cabin lighting ...

At this stage, I decided to remove the bottom of the cabin with a saw to make room:

I'll obviously need to fill that gap with some plastic card, but it looks good for the LEDs. Let's continue with the second red one.

Another fitting test; looks good!

And now with the two white LEDs:

 

And finally, on the driving side:

This looks very nice to me! Next steps are to:

1. Test wire the LEDs to make sure they still work
2. Make a cabin with plastic card, the driving console, the train operator, and lighting
3. Wire everything and test
4. Check light leakage