N Scale North American Passenger Cars

Step 1: Preparation and tools

For the installation, you will need a passenger car (in this case a Great Northern passenger car) and an interior lighting kit with white LED (11-209 or 11-210).

Tweezers can be useful for aligning and setting the foil strip in place on the roof of the passenger car.

Step 2: Removing the body shell

The dome car's body shell is easily removed by grasping one of the trucks in your thumb and forefinger, and gently inserting a fingernail between the base of the car and the body and popping it up. Make Sure to keep track of the orientation of the body shell versus the base as it will make life easier when it comes time to reassemble the car.

Step 3: Inserting the contact leads

The leads will only fit into place on one side of the car, and should be inserted as shown here. When correctly placed they should slide the full length of the groove in the interior detail plate.

Step 4: Assembling the LED fixture part 1

You will need to assemble the light fixture before you can set it in place. The light fixture in the 11-209 and 11-210 kits consists of three pieces: the mount, the LED board, and the optional orange filter. The orange filter may be utilized to give the interior lights a "warmer" and more subdued color or it can be left off to give the lights a brighter and more flourescent appearance.

Step 5: Assembling the LED fixture part 2

If you are installing the orange filter, do so by installing it into the mount as shown here. Once this has been done, the LED circuit board will lock into place with its flat side facing away from the plastic, and its two metal pin connectors sliding into the little grooves in the white plastic mount.

Finally, Cut a small square from the foil sticker provided with the kit that is the size of the board and attach it to the exposed, brown, flat side of the LED board.

Step 6: Placing the LED fixture

The newly assembled LED fixture will set into place on the car's base as shown. Note the contact leads sandwich between the fixture and the car's base.

Step 7: Placing the foil strip and Light tube

This step is where it is very important that you took note of the correct orientation of the body shell to the base.

Peel the backing off the foil strip and lay it down across the roof of the body shell, extending all the way to the end of the car where the LED fixture will sit. It should extend all the way to the end, not just to the start of the light tube, in order to reflect any heat built up in the LED circuit board away from the roof of the car.

The light tube itself should be placed so that the end of the ridged side will sit flush with the end of the LED fixture. The light tube should be placed with the ribbed side facing into the roof.

Step 8: Finishing up

Replace the body shell, taking care to put any window parts back into place and making sure that the body shell is oriented correctly on the body. If it bows out at the sides when placed, it is on backwards and will need to be flipped around (and possibly the light tube position changed accordingly).