Installing the Scale Model Scenery AX055-OO-BW Wall Mounted Floodlights Kit

Installing the Scale Model Scenery AX055-OO-BW

Wall Mounted Floodlight Kit

In this article aimed at any one new to the hobby we take a look at how to install the AX055-OO-BW Wall Mounted Floodlight Kit. The kit comes with six 3D printed floodlight housings with small type S.M.D L.E.D’s pre-installed, six resistors & full instructions. This lighting kit is designed to go with the Gaugemaster  ‘Fordhampton Locomotive Depot’ kit (Former Hornby HST Locomotive Depot Kit), but perfect for any other OO/1:76 locomotive shed kit  or any other industrial building.

So for this article we’ll install three of the floodlights on a Bachmann Scalescene Single Locomotive Depot building. The floodlights can be connected directly to a suitable 3V DC power supply straight from the packet, without having to use the supplied resistors. If you’re intending to connect to 12V to 16V model train controller, 12v transformer or DCC accessory decoder, you’ll need to use the the supplied resistors (one with each floodlight).

The resistors should be soldered in series with the red wire as shown on the supplied instruction sheet. If you don’t do soldering you can always use chocbloc type connectors instead of soldering.

Lets get started…

First clear the area you’ll be working on on your layout. In the photo on the right is the Bachmann loco shed we’ll be fitting three out of the six of the flood lights to.

Remove the loco shed. Work out where you want your wires to up through the baseboard, mark hole & drill hole big enough for two wires.

For our building we need to remove the dummy floodlights. These are easy to remove by simply cutting with a pair of cutters. If you are using the Gaugemaster / Hornby loco shed you don’t need to do this stage (unless you’ve fitted dummy flood lights previously).

Using the 1.5mm drill bit, drill the wire hole for each floodlight you’re fitting. Take care with these resin buildings due to the resin dust. Make sure you wear a mask & safety glasses.

Next use the wire strippers to remove a small section of the wire insulation from the wire ends. Do this on both wires from the floodlights.

Next use the wire strippers to remove a small section of the wire insulation from the wire ends. Do this on both red & black wires from the floodlights.

Then feed the wires from the floodlight through the drilled hole.

Add a small amount of glue (i’ve used some Bostick All purpose gel glue) to the back of the floodlight. Press & hold the flood light as shown on the right whilst the glue sets.

Next job is to tin the ends of both the stripped wire ends of the red & black wires from the flood light with solder as shown.

If using chocbloc wire connectors skip the next few sections on soldering.

Soldering the wires section…

Next job is to tin the ends of both the stripped wire ends of the red & black wires from the flood light with solder as shown.

Next job is to tin the ends of both the stripped wire ends of the red & black wires from the flood light with solder as shown.

If using a 12v DC power supply you MUST USE the resistor to prevent blowing the LED’s in the floodlight!!

Next job is to solder one of the supplied resistors on to the red wire of the flood light as shown on the right.

If using a 12v DC power supply you MUST USE the resistor to prevent blowing the LED’s in the floodlight!!

Then solder another wire on to the other end of the resistor. This wire you will connect up to the power supply when installing the flood light is finished.

If using a 12v DC power supply you MUST USE the resistor to prevent blowing the LED’s in the floodlight!!

Next job is to insulate the exposed wires by sliding some heat shrink down the wire & over the exposed bear wire & resistor. Either hold the soldering iron close the heatshrink or use a hair drier or similar over the heat shrink.

Wiring Up Using Chocbloc Connectors

If using a 12v DC power supply you MUST USE the resistor to prevent blowing the LED’s in the floodlight!!

If you don’t fancy soldering or don’t feel confident in using a soldering iron, use Chocbloc Wire Connectors instead. The photo on the right shows how it all wires up using chocbloc connectors. Use smaller chocbloc connectors rather than the chunky ones you see in the photo (Ones used in the photo for demo purpose) The black jack plug on the right (not supplied) comes with the transformer i’m using.

The black jack plug connects to the power supply transformer or omit the jack plug & connect to the 12V DC power outlet on your train controller.

Multiple lights

Here i’ve run the three red wires with resistors fitted from the flood lights to the red wire you can just see on the top left hand corner of the building. As the building already has LED lighting strips fitted, i’ve connected the red wire to the three red wires from the flood lights. The same again has been done with the black wires, with the three black wires from the flood lights connected together with the black wire from the roof mounted lighting strip.

Heat shrink has been used to insulate the wire joins & the wires have been glued & taped up out the way as seen in the photo. Again if you don’t solder you can use small chocblocs to connect up all the wires instead.

So with all the wires connected up you should have just two wires (which feed all the lights) ready to be connected to your power supply.

Before re-installing the building it’s a good idea to temporarily connect up to your power supply & test to make sure all is working ok. If all ok then feed the two wires from the building through the hole drilled previously & refit building back into place.

Building with newly fitted flood lights refitted back on the layout.

The two wires i’ve run under the baseboard through holes i’ve pre-drilled for the layout wiring.

Connect the two wires to your power supply.

In this photo on the right i have a two wires that run around whole layout which act a bit like the Ring Main you have in your home for your lighting etc. This Ring Main feeds all the lighting on my layout & as you see on the right, the two wires from building are connected into this chocbloc on the layout lighting ring main.

This saves method saves having to run wires from every light right back to the power supply. So for every new light installed on the layout simply connect to the nearest chocbloc on the ring main.

Plug in & turn on the power.