Installing the Kato lighting kit into the Yo 5000 brake van

The freight car pack described in another post includes a lovely little brake van (caboose) with working tail lights. You can also add one of the Kato lighting fixtures (Kato #11-213) to illuminate the inside of the brake van, but the instructions provided are in Japanese and not particular clear. In particular, two or three important steps aren't illustrated in the diagrams, so if you're working from those alone, you might struggle a bit.

Missing step 1

Taking apart the brake van is easy to do, with the various parts unclipping one at a time. Once you do that, the brass contact strips slide through obvious slots and as the instructions show, you need to use some wire clippers to snip them back to the right length. But what happens next isn't so clear!

As far as I can tell, the white plastic housing the contains the LED (and the orange colour filter) clips in at the opposite end to the grey plastic column, as seen in the photo above. It may take some fettling to get the brass contact strips pressing firmly against the electric pick-up strips on the white plastic piece. In the end, I used a couple of drops of superglue to ensure the white plastic piece stayed in place -- leaving the brake van on a piece of Unitrack with the current on so that I can see that everything is lighting up properly. 

 

Missing step 2 

The next step is to install the light diffusion bar into the roof. Although the diagram indicates the bar should run across the whole length of the roof, if you do that, it won't fit back onto the body. At best, you get half the roof, as shown above. This allows space for the top of the LED circuit board to fit flush against the roof while shining down the light diffusion bar.

 

 Missing step 3  

Finally, the grey plastic column needs to be snipped back a few mm to create some space for the light diffusion once the roof and body are reunited. If you don't do this, the grey plastic column will press against the diffusion bar and stop the roof fitting correctly.

 

The end result!

You can now reassemble the brake van and with any luck the roof and sides will clip back onto the body without any problems. The result is a brake van with internal lighting as well as working taillights.