Lighting the Faller Station

There's been some uncertainty about how to fix in place the Faller station, and also how to allow access to the lighting inside. The options were to either make the whole station removable from the layout, or avoid fixing the roofs (station + shed) so these can be removed in the future when needed. The latter was chosen, due to the disadvantages associated with the former, namely "breaking" the earth blend right next to the walls and the track ballast next to the corresponding track-side.

The lamp sockets and bulbs - Faller 180670 - are not included with the station (Faller 110096) as-is but I did purchase 3 of these a while ago. Since the sockets have each 2 holes, 1.5 mm in diameter, I've extended these to 2 mm, since I had plenty of 2mm bolts complete with nuts. The wires will have plenty of space, since the whole building will seat on beams, 2 cm in height, so the track terrain nearby is matched.

The Faller sockets come with pre-drilled holes
of 1.5 mm

Lamp sockets in place

Detail of the lamp socket in the station building,
slightly offset by mistake

Replacing a Viessmann Light Bulb

More than 3 years ago, a Viessmann 6384 railway lamp was bought. Besides aspects such as painting, positioning and wire placement, one thing of interest was how the light bulb is changed, in case it fails.

Removing the plastic hood is rather quick, although some force needs to be applied. Next came taking the light bulb out. This proved more complicated for me, so with help from Viessmann's support, it turns out the brown wire has to be gently pulled inside the mast. Using some sharp tweezers is best, in order to squeeze the tip between the mast's lattice, and pull the wire bit by bit towards the top. After the wire has some some space inside the mast, the light bulb can be further extracted. In first stage, this needs to be done with care until the wire that's not insulated is released from the tube. Then the whole brown wire needs to be extracted via this end (the 6229 replacement bulb comes complete with the wires - one long insulated and one short not insulated - just like the removed one). The red wire is actually soldered to the mast, and the electrical connectivity goes just up to the point where the bulb is inserted. The last picture shows the electrical connectivity between these points.

The lamp before disassembly

Removing the hood

Light bulb extracted so that the
live wire is released

View of the wire inside the mast

Testing that electrical connectivity
is in place between the edge of the
mast and the red wire

Problems Assembling Faller's 110096's Shed Roof

A while ago I've ran into issues assembling the roof of the shed for the Faller 110096 Klingenberg station. I've emailed Faller support at the time, and they were very kind and provided by post - free of charge - a new paper mask and a few elements as well. However it was my fault that I didn't explain my problem very well. Hopefully I will be able to do this below.

 At page 10 of the manual included with the station, the roof must be applied on top of the walls, after the M2 paper mask has been inserted in place. This doesn't work quite ok though. A bit of background: the roof has 2 shoulders underneath; these will "click" in place when applied to the walls of the building. Also, the adjoining wall of the station has 2 grooves, into which the edges of the roof will only slide into provided the shoulders click in place when applied to the shed's walls.The problems start when the shed's paper mask is put in place - once this is done there is no more room for the shoulders to be inserted so that they "click" in place between the shed's walls, since the paper mask takes up that space. Also the grooves in the station wall no longer match the edge of the shed's roof.

One way to solve this would be to cut the paper mask so that the shoulders reach enough depth, but this will mean the structure of the paper mask will be broken, thus losing strength. One workaround would be simply remove the black top of the paper mask, thus assuring the roof's shoulders are no longer blocked, however there is one problem by doing this - light will be installed inside the shed (Faller 180670); the shed's roof is plastic, but doesn't stop light completely, so will run the risk of the roof "glowing" in the night.

Roof shoulders

Shed roof sliding in the station wall's grooves

Shed's paper mask glued and inserted 

Shed roof's shoulders no longer able to "click"

Shed's roof too high due to shoulders hitting the paper mask

Shed's room no longer matching the groove in the station wall,
once the paper mask is applied