N Scale Cars with Lights from China!

 

Okay, so I've got lights in my trains, lights in my buildings but no lights in my cars! Is this one of those final details that will be sacrificed in the name of cost/time in this scale?  For years, that is what I have been gradually accepting.  Yes, their have been cars released with lights installed, but these tend to be fairly limited and very expensive!

Well, the industrious Chinese are at it again!  I was asked a question about these a couple of months back, and hadn't really paid attention to them until someone pointed out the price....about $2.00 each!

So I ordered myself a pack of 10 to check them out and installed them in my 'passenger terminal' backscene area you see picture above.   I ordered mine from Everest Model on eBay, although they currently have nothing for sale, I would recommend searching on eBay as I suspect someone else may aslo offer these at some point. 

The cars come in a plastic bag, no fancy packaging.  Which is nice considering the price! :-)

The wire leads to the four SMD LED's in these cars are naturally soldered oh so delicately, so take care not to accidently disconnect the wire form the SMD, like I did in the car below! But, this car now makes the perfect subject to take a look at what is going on 'under the hood' as we say here in the US.

The bottom of the car is a black plastic material that comes off with some gentle prying. 

The yellow wire is attached to a resistor with 'green/brown/black' color coding, which seems to indicate these are 51ohm resistors.  Which is both advertised and seems to work fine with 12v DC power.   I have to say that I was honestly impressed that these vehicles come with 4 SMD (LED's) installed: 2 white in the front, and 2 red in the back! 

Of course, what really matters is how they look!  Well, with some minor image adjustment with the camera to capture the overall look (these LED's are quite bright!), they look pretty incredible!  Now, the cars themselves are really nothing to get excited about, but they do seem to be better than I was expected. 

The white and red lights appear just where they should with only a very small amount of 'bleed' into the car interiors!  And look at those headlights in the below photo! Wow!

So I have a couple of thoughts with these....I like them a lot, but they are rather plain and a layout full of these could look strange. I was thinking of removing the wiring and LED's and installing them into a Wiking, Busch or other vehicle, but that's essentially like doing the wiring myself.  No thanks.  Some paint and other details might be enough to avoid looking too uniform, but again, its still a basic, boring, sedan.