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Friday, January 3, 2025

Lighting for Roco Corail passenger cars

 I've been trying several ways to install lighting into passenger cars. So far, my favorite is the ESU strip, with its decoder and fancy options. There are two others I have to test: Roco and Model SF Production - especially for the Corail since the lights came from under the rack.

 


I know ESU and Roco won't really give that effect, so I'll have to see with Model SF. For now, let's take a look at Roco.

 

Roco 40420

First step is to open the car and separate the various components to access the bogies - it is well explained on the instructions:








The pack consists on the 2 power pick-ups, the main strip, double-side tape, and the interesting part: the LEDs can be positioned as needed and the electrical connection is done with tiny clamps or couplings. Pretty smart!











Now, we can run a test before closing everything back:





I wasn't quite clear if the strip would work even without a decoder, since there's a plug for it but none is provided with the kit. This is a big difference from the ESU one. For Roco, a tiny decoder can be installed for the fancy options. However, even without the decoder, the lighting works well in DC and DCC.