Lighting the module
Most house kits are delivered with a base plate which lends itself to integrate a house into the scenery, yet have it mobile at the same time. To achieve this, we need a pair of black and white banana plugs and a short length of wires with matching colors. Best suited are the small banana plugs made by Brawa or Märklin. Those daring to solder within already built houses, also have a small soldering iron handy. The not so brave ones look around for terminal strips and some plastic cement.
What´s all this fuss about?
Modules tend to be transported from one location to another because they´re so handy. If the buildings are firmly affixed to the module, according to Murphy´s law, some transport damage will occur... If the houses are neatly stowed away in a separate box, one can enjoy them for considerable longer time than just one trip to a friend.
Here we go:
The best time to modify a house´s baseplate is befoer the kit is actually built. But an already built-up house can also be modified. Drill two holes with the diameter of the banana plugs into the baseplate. The holes should be located inside the building, of course... Please drill slowly because otherwise the plastic will melt. The black wire goes into the black plug and the white one - right! - goes into the white plug. The soldering fraction now grabs a piece of pc-board and solders each wire to one of the soldering strips. The others connect the wires to the terminal strips now.
The next step is to glue the banana plugs into the drilled holes. Make sure that the plug insulation is flush with the bottom of the baseplate so that only the male plug protrudes from the baseplate. Set the assembly aside and let the glue harden.
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Now the actual work starts:
I use white and yellow LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for house lighting. Ok, for certain windows, you may also use red LEDs... LEDs, because they - contrary to lamps - don´t emit heat and have a very long lifetime (about 5 years or 100,000 hours). However, LEDs cannot use the 12 to 16 Volts provided by the white/black AC wires. They would light up only once (but very bright) and then disappear into Nirwana. LEDs have to be operated with a resistor since they use a maximum of 1.5 Volts to 3 Volts. You´re on the safe side if you connect a 1 k-ohm resistor to the LED.
Again it is easier if the house is not built yet. I use black cardboard to build a casing for the window which is to be lighted. The LED is glued to the "ceiling" of this casing. The legs of the LED protrude through the cardboard. The resistor is soldered to the longer leg (the plus-pole), and the other end of the resistor is soldered to the white wire. The black wire is soldered to the shorter leg of the LED (the minus-pole). The other end of the black wire goes to the ground-terminal of the terminal strip or the pc-board.
We´re still missing out on the female plugs to connect the building to the module base. They are mounted directly into the scenery base using the same principle as with the baseplate of the building. To achieve a perfect match of male and female plug, push the building slightly into the scenery base in order to see where the holes for the female plugs have to be drilled. I use two-component epoxy to glue the feamle plugs into the scenery base.
The dangling wires will be connected to the white/black pair of bus wires underneath the module or connected to a switch in the fascia and from there to the bus wires.
Now simply "plug in" your house and you´re done. Your house is firmly connected to the module and can be removed any time without damaging it.
If you build yourself a jig with the distances of the plug holes, you have the chance to swap houses at any time and can make your module represent different time frames or locations...
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© 2009 by Erhard Baltrusch, Hamburg, Germany