The Kamloops Line

      Rolling stock consists of about 70 pieces: Freight; Box cars, Coal hoppers, Tank cars, Refers, and a few miscellaneous. Passenger cars for Canadian Pacific 'the Canadian' and VIA Rail Canada. Also, Flat cars, Grain hoppers, a repair Crane, and several Caboose.
My Lighted Passenger Cars are toward the bottom of this page.

Canadian National

90 ton Coal Hoppers

Canadian Province and Territories Series

by Micro-Trains Line Co., Inc. of Talent, Oregon,
consists of FTA & B locomotives, 13 Province and Territory boxcars and a caboose. The boxcars are arranged by Province in alphabetical order.
For larger images of the boxcars click Boxcars. For the locos click Locomotives, and for the decoders, DCC.

CN Wrecker Crane with work car

Model Power

Canadian National

4 bay covered hopper cars

HBR and FMC 'beer can' Tank cars

Atlas with MTL trucks/couplers

CN and BC Rail 39ft. Single Dome Tank cars

Atlas with MTL trucks/couplers

Canadian National Railway

Passenger cars. I have this train on my layout to recognize the Kamloops Heritage Railway
in Kamloops, BC. I think the passenger cars are pretty much in era even though my locomotive
is a 2-8-2 Mikado. The KHR locomotive is a CLC (Canadian Locomotive Company) 2-8-0, built
in 1912 in Windsor Ontario.

Canadian National Railway

Cupola caboose and wood refrigerator car

VIA Rail Canada

Passenger cars

Great Northern

GN Box car repainted from L&N

Click image makes it larger.

CP and SP

Flat cars

Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba

Three in a set of thirteen Commemrative Provincial Boxcars, one for each province and territory in Canada.

New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia

Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Ontario

Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan

The Quebec car has Boxcar Sound installed

Yukon and Caboose

Caboose lighting parts

The lighting for this caboose includes one 3mm yellow LED, and the TL1 decoder mounted in the roof. On the floor is the bundle which includes the 220uF capacitor, two 1K5 resistors and a 914A diode. The contacts on the wheels are Streamlined Backshop and are shown on the passenger car below.

Lighted caboose

The non-flicker effect in my caboose works very well. I did not see a flicker at all. The light from one LED is bright enough but I would like to have had it spred out more evenly.
Here is a schematic drawing of the light circuit.

Light lens & LED

For the lighting in these two passenger cars I used the Kato 11-211 N scale lighting kit. The kit includes the light lens, the led, contact strips and filters. My cars are not Kato so it took a few adjustments to get them to fit. This car is Rowa and the one below is Atlas. The decoder is TCS FL-4 with the light circuit wired through a no-flicker circuit. See below.
Click Here for an extra large image of the light lens and LED.

Power contacts

The wheel contacts here are spring stainless steel from Richmond Controls. They are mounted with a 00-90 screw and connected to the decoder with a small brass solder lug. They make a good axle contact.

Lighted car

My lighting circuit includes a 820 ohm resistor to reduce the LED current to about 7 mA, about one half the design current. The car lights are still quite bright. Also, a 470uF capacitor keeps the lights on for no-flicker operation. When crossing turnout switches or other not so good contact spots on the track, the lights stay lighted.
Here is a schematic drawing of the light circuit.
Here is a schematic drawing with NO decoder.

Light lens, LED & Decoder

For my Atlas coach I used the same light lens and LED with the FL-4 decoder but instead of a circuit board I bundled the components. I used a 1000 uF capacitor and a 1k resistor. These allowed the lights to stay on longer if the power was disconnected.

Power contacts

The wheel contacts here are from Streamlined Backshop. They contact the inside flange of the wheel so the wheelsets are different from above.

Lighted car

Here is the lighted coach on my layout, in place with the VIA Rail passenger service. My work on lighting cars so far has been an expirement. I will do more with reducing current and drag and improving the lighting appearance. Decoders allow me to turn the lights on or off with my DCC controller.