adding lights to LGB 20121 V100

idlemarvel

Neither idle nor a marvel
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I have purchased said model and am pleased with it except for the lighting.
The front / rear white lights are very dim, and there is no option for red rear light or cab lighting.
I would like to fix these shortcomings.

My experience with g-scale is limited but I have fitted firebox light to PIKO BR80 and lighting connector for carriage interior lights and rear running lamp, so I have some idea what I am doing. :-)

The V100 comes with sound decoder fitted; it is not quite clear which one as the manufacturer id is 131 (Trix) but I can't find any documentation about it. The LBG manual only has a few pages on decoder settings, mainly on how to adjust the sound, but no reference to the physical decoder.

It is a 27 pin decoder and the pins seem to be organised like the Massoth XLS M1.
It is mounted on a mother board and I have traced where for example outputs A1 and A2 are located on the mother board so I could use those solder pads for connecting rear running light and cab light if only I knew how to turn A1 and A2 on/off! (For the running light I could just piggy back off the main lights but I would like the running light to be independently switched.)
Q1: Does anyone know how to enable A1 and A2 and how to map them to functions like F15 and F16?

The fitted lights are quite dim because there three lights each end illuminated by a 2.5v LED and transparent plastic arrangement (light tube) to carry the light from that to the three external lights. A bit cheap and cheerful. As far as I can tell the lights are set to full power (CV 113 front and CV 116 rear both set to 255).
Q2: Does anyone know how to make these lights brighter?

Thanks for any advice.
 
I owned one of these recently, now sold on as my plans changed but I have to agree the lights are very disappointing i was surprised to see just 1 small LED feeding all 3 lights via Light periscopes??!!

The lack of other some other items was a little surprising ( no cab Lights or driver figure etc)

However we have to remeber its Marklin designed & manufactured not LGB Lehmann, and it is fairly inexpensive
AND it is quite powerful!!
 
Agree on all those points. I just want to know how to make it better! :-)
 
Should have added you can improve things also by re fixing the window glass!! You will probably notice that they appear to be attached by just a couple of tiny blobs of adhesive at each end, which makes it very easy to push them inwards when handling the loco.

Re improvements to the lighting, it should not be too difficult to fit bulbs or LEDs to the white lights, and drill out the 'false' red lights and fit red LED's. powering these from the supply to the original LED's having first checked the voltage ( so that the correct bulbs/LED's can be used)
Obviously the RED lights would be powered from the power supply to thw white lights at the other end.
 
I take it this is purchased as new? If the decoder id is Trix that ties in with it being the new Marklin large scale decoder, which should indeed match the pin-out of the XLS M1 - I understand The M1 is designed for the new Marklin socket (hence the designation).

I haven't played with such a decoder yet, so cannot comment on the pin-out for lighting etc.
 
idlemarvel said:
... The fitted lights are quite dim because there three lights each end illuminated by a 2.5v LED and transparent plastic arrangement (light tube) to carry the light from that to the three external lights. A bit cheap and cheerful. As far as I can tell the lights are set to full power (CV 113 front and CV 116 rear both set to 255).
If that's the case then I'd expect there to be a resistor in the circuit for each LED - probably at least 1k? To be honest that's a good thing - I'm not a fan of using the decoder CVs to control the output voltage to the lights, it's too easy for a reset or decoder exchange to end up with full power settings and blown lights / LEDs.
 
Thanks ntp, my German is poor but I can get the gist of the table. Perfect.
 
ntpntpntp said:
If that's the case then I'd expect there to be a resistor in the circuit for each LED - probably at least 1k?
Yes there is a resistor in the mother board, I haven't measured it.

Thanks for the comments, most helpful.
 
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