Project model railway #29 - Light for the wagons

The poor passengers of my trains were doomed to sit in the dark ... UNTIL NOW!

My work on the model train project hasn't stopped but switched to more little - but important - details. One of those missing details was that the wagons were not illuminated and the guests were forced to sit in the dark.
So I started to get things done... which was more work than expected:

Get all the things

I actually need more than just a few LEDs. To have things working properly I prepare: LED strips (warm yellow - we are representing the 60), some kind of grinder to get the power from the tracks, power packs to avoid flickering, powered coupling parts (to pass the power from one wagon to the next), tiny people, soldering stuff and other tools.

Placing the LEDs

The LED strips are usually longer than needed. Modern wagons are far longer than the old ones, so I need to cut the strip properly. In this case the strip is already equipped with a dimmer to adjust the brightness.
The additional red back lights are not needed for the first two wagons and will be cut off.

Installing the grinder

The grinder is a little copper part that has contact to the inner sides of the wheels. The electricity will now flow from the rail tracks through the weels and the grinder an power up our LEDs.
The wires find their way inside through a little hole in the ground of the wagon.

Connect the wagons

I decided to power only two wagons per grinder to avoid flickering in all wagons in case of bad power conduction. Allthough the power pack will last for ~10 seconds. For this I used the powered coupling parts. The are basically like a normal coupling but equipped with wires and copper contacts.

A quick check if everything works as expected

Final steps

Last but not least, we need to seat our little people.
Allthough everything is in proper H0 (1:87) scale, sometimes the figures. Are a bit too tall (or the seats are too small) so that they don't fit properly. Easy solution: CUT THEIR LEGS! (not easy to be a tiny figure)

Lastly put the roof back on and cheer up the happy little (sometimes legless) people sitting in their brand new illuminated wagons enjoying the trip:

I hope you enjoyed this little story about lightning up things.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comments.
And as always, don't forget to follow for more interesting stuff about my project.