I hate to be that guy… but if you pull off that white cabinet on the side of the caboose on the inside there is already a 9V battery holder in there, it’s meant for a rechargeable 9V so it will charge while on track power and then you have power for when not on track power, or at least that’s how the USA Northeastern (center copula) cabooses are set up.
Incorrect. It does not light up the caboose. Only the flashing light. Also, I do not have track power to charge said battery. Also I wanted all of the lights on. The way the wiring in the caboose it done it will drain the battery very quickly. If you hit the entire thing and hard wire a 9V the lights will stay lit for a week. You will not get nearly the same performance using their wiring and a rechargeable battery. I’ve tried.
@@TheeFishGuy gotcha, I understand you don’t have track power but I was thinking you could put your 9V in the cabinet and remove the bulbs and still power your other LEDs in addition to the blinking light. It’s odd cause I can run my interior lights off the 9V in the cabinet on my Center copula caboose, maybe previous owner did something to make it work that way, not 100% sure. Thanks for the info
Great vid JTFG...you had me at putting the screws in a baggy to identify which caboose they belong to...LOL...OCD or whatever!!! All 10 of my caboose's are battery powered in a similar way but I use all Evan Designs products in mine. Thanks for all you do for the G scale train topics!!!!
Between you and Robby, I guess I gotta completely switch to battery power. Lol. That’s good to know. Thanks! All I have to do now, is convert my USAT passenger cars
Enjoyed the video. This inspiration will probably get me to convert my center cupola USA trains caboose. It does have detail inside. The battery on it is easily accessible via popping off the cupola. Too bad the extended vision one requires disassembly.
@@TheeFishGuy all of the trains here on RU-vid I made from scratch, however not all of them use batteries, I do have a catenary system that makes use of a "third rail" which is basically a wire that runs along the middle of the track since my track is not metal. So the top wire would be the 'red' and the rail wire 'black' lol. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LQYO3v0L9lQ.html here, if you look carefully you'll see the wire on the track
I wish whoever did a battery conversation of my aristo caboose had seen this video had to buy the light fitting the circuit board second hand and redo it all was so peed off luckily it all works and eBay do the led bulbs cheap enough I’ve got a load for converting all my Bulbs over on my layout as they will last longer than the normal bulbs and wont get as hot you do need to watch what colour white you get though 😐 brilliant white isn’t as authentic 😅
@@TheeFishGuy yeah but the way you’ve done it you can put it back to stock if you go to sell it and kept all the parts You took off so the way you have done it is in my eyes the best way
Dear Jonathan. I exactly followed your instructions and rebuilt my USA Trains Caboose to LED battery power. Everything so far works fine. However, it seems that I am having a battery draining even though the main switch beneath the car is set to "all lights off". After two days the 9V battery block is completely emptied although not in use. Clearly, there is a miminum power running through the circuit board on the bottom of the car, which is enough to light up a low power consumption LED at the end of the car without having to activate the main switch so "all lights on". Do you have any advice how I can get rid of this leakage current? Thx in advane, Tom.
@@thomashottiger9746 since this video I’ve discovered the same thing. I’ve also discovered that you have to remove the existing circuit boards. I should probably take this video down….
In all fairness I’ve had to modify how I do this completely. Now I gut everything that’s stock and use all my own components. Using the batter case inside will drain the battery very quickly, leaving the main board that controls the electronics also drains the battery quickly. Now all that happens is the battery runs the LEDs I install directly and they’re switched on by the stock switch. I can run the caboose for a week straight till the battery dies.
