u/Saint_The_Stig

So I recently got DCC for my trains and am loving, now one of the "problems" is that I need more light control for the trains that should be "off" on other tracks. I'd also like to add marker lights to my cars (mainly Amfleets) but I want to be able to only have the right ones on. So needing to be able to do at least 3 light channels either on one all-in-one solution or a solution small enough to fit enough for 3 in a passenger car.

Rapido has a pretty good system for their passenger cars so I was wondering if I could add a similar thing to other cars. Of course I could just do simple DCC decoders but my concern there is the limited 4 digit number range and how that would lead to conflicts. Ideally it would be nice if there were some ready made boards to solder in for lighting control, but if you have a video or some other guide of someone installing these kinds of magnetic switches (with parts that can actually be still found) that would also work. I'm also open to other methods of controlling passenger car lights on a per car basis, but I don't want to take the cars off the track to do so when options that don't need that exist.

So recently I picked up some Centralia Car Shops (CCS) passenger cars and to be honest I'm really not impressed. I was originally looking at them because they were like the only thing I could find the did the PRR "Fleet of Modernism" (FoM) paint scheme in amounts that could actually build trains. Well besides the few Bachmann oones or the classic Con-Cor sets since Con-Cor painted those things in basically everything possible.

The CCS FoM cars were hard to find but I picked up the Kato 20th Century Limited base set for a deal too good to pass up with the plan to eventual have some Chicago-like races with my PRR trains. With that I branched out to pick up some NYC CCS cars and eventually got a couple.

First annoyance was the cars needing new batteries for the lights (which of course I didn't have) but eventually I got them replaced. Well most of them, turns out there are older run cars with no lights or interiors and trying to take the roof off just chips the side. Frankly though it's just kinda crazy that this is somehow pitched as a premium feature when Kato has track power available in basically every car they make now. I've only had them on the layout for a week and it's already supper annoying and it doesn't look like there is a remotely easy way to add track power. Also annoyingly one of them had both the coupler boxes spontaneously disassemble after just one session.

But even then, the colors are pretty off the Kato set and even noticeably different between the older and newer versions. Reading online it seems that the CCS cars are the ones less correct. But then I find the biggest problem, the cars aren't even the right protypes for what they are painted for! It's one thing for the goofy old Con-Cor's, but these are supped to be "N Scale's Finest Passenger Cars".

So that rant aside, what options are left for passenger car sets that are the actual right cars and not just one type painted for every road? Kato seems to do pretty well now, but they do like one new set a year. Rapido has some good sets, but of course they are Canada focused (with so additional good ol' extra paint jobs) so that doesn't help me a ton looking mainly for East Coast US stuff. But those two are all I know. Are there any other brands out there making correct passenger sets? For NYC I'm perfectly fine at this point buy more of the Kato sets and decals to make more names/road numbers for additional trains. I really wanted some FoM cars and those are gonna be a lot harder to paint up for the cars that are the same in Kato's Broadway Limited of a later era and still leaves a few cars that are different.

I guess the other thing is to start begging Kato or Broadway Limited to make some, then by the time they do I will have enough time to paint enough cars myself to be halfway decent. lol Thanks for reading my rant.

TLDR: Truck pin from car came out and won't go back in (Too tight) what screws can I use to attach trucks?

I picked up some 86' Auto Part boxcars from Bluford Shops the other month and so far I love them. Big and impressive and roll pretty well, on straights at least. I have enough to fully occupy a T-TRAK end cap and one loco doesn't have enough traction to pull them out. Fair enough, there are big cars and tight turns, plus I'll use more power on larger curves most of the time.

I did mess with the trucks on one car to see if maybe they were a bit stiff and ended up taking the trucks off. One of them went back on no problem, but the other end doesn't want to take a pin (with a truck on it). I tried swapping the trucks and pins and still only one stays on. I even tried freezing the pin and while it went back in and held it didn't stay held and came back out.

I looked around online and found some mentions of replacing pins with screws, but conflicting info about which sizes to use. I'm not super worried about it since these cars have easy access to the other side of the hole on the inside, but I figured I'd try asking before doing anything to find the best practice here.

I'm ussually not a huge fan of the Reading T1, since it gets in the way of the PRR T1 when talking about it, but I recently have lucked into getting the Micro-Trains full State collection and figured the perfect thing to pull it would be the Freedom Train #1 that I have seen multiple times in person. Between that and the Chessie and Conrail specials they make I figured I would finally put my mild annoyance aside and grab some.

It looks like BLI is doing a new run of the T1, but aside from new paints I'm not seeing any differences online. Are there any differences? Because There are some deals to be had on the 2024 models and if they are basically the same I'll just grab whatever is a better price. It looks like the Conrail one is only from the 2024 run and I'm currently on the fence for the #250 Freedom Train which is a new one for the 2026 run. So I might end up with both anyway.

An additional question about BLI Stealth Steamers though. I wanted to get Stealth to use ESU decoders since they have features I want that Paragon 4 doesn't have (last I checked) but do you fully give up the option for a smoke unit with Stealth? is it like the speaker where it's included but not used? Can you buy the part and install it yourself with your own decoder, or is it just not an option unless you get Paragon 4? On that note can a Paragon decoder be replaced with any other? I have seen that ESU makes an adapter board, but that is for HO, I have not seen any mention of it for N scale.

So I'm working on my first modules to get into having a bit more than just Kato track on the table. I made some basic end caps the other week and this weekend I got some triple modules to bridge the gap between my two tables. These I also put in the wiring instead of just sticking a feeder track between the modules. I put the oval together and get my trusty Kato tram on, I switch the the controller to forwards... and it shoots off in the other direction.

After a quick catch off the rerailer and double checking wires I think for a moment. The wiring is right (I even double check with a feeder track on it's own. So why does the standard have it so that on a right hand drive train you need to set the controller in reverse to go forward? I get why to do the same color on the outside, but why not WBBW so that forward is forward? Did the standard get developed in Japan or the UK or something?