Bachmann's New N Scale Amfleet car
Here's a quick look at a partially disassembled Bachmann Amfleet car. I just got the cars and am looking forward to tinkering with them. I've ordered some Mocalova Model Works coupler adapters to install Micro-Trains couplers on the cars. I took these pictures using a Nikon D100 digital SLR with a 105mm macro lens and the camera's on-camera flash. Please enjoy these pictures but don't consider them to be "product photography" since they are far more "journalistic" in speed and quality than they are suitable for publication.
 | This is the new Bachmann Amfleet car with the chassis removed. There are five (!) screws that have to be removed to get the bottom off. It was quite a puzzle to find them all. Note how good the printing is on this car. If I hadn't compressed the jpegs to speed loading online you would quite easily read the fine writing on the car. |
 | This picture clearly shows the electrical contacts for the interior lighting, the clip that holds the operating diaphragm in place, and a bit of red plastic that looks like an effort to illuminate the car's marker lights. The diaphragm turned out to be easy to remove, if not a bit fragile, and it should be black rather than silver. |
 | The interior lighting and the car's interior are integrated into a single assembly that is just a simple friction fit into the car. It comes out easily once the chassis is off. |
 | The other end of the light board says "LED 1" so I'm intrigued by the mention of 1 & 4 but there are only two LEDs. I haven't yet taken the tape off to see if there are more underneath. I don't know why the ends of the clear light guide are painted orange/yellow |
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 | The marker lights have red plastic behind them, but it doesn't look like there is a good path for light to reach them. This will require a bit more experimentation/disassembly too. The brass strip acts as a spring to make the diaphragm operate. |
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 | The end of the car shows much nicer looking marker lights than its earlier sibling (what am I going to do with all those earlier cars now?). |
Day two of dissection
 | This is the car's interior with the lighting board removed. The brass strips connect with the pin-contacts in the picture(s) below. |
 | The lighting board is held to the "light distributor" (for lack of a better word) by two small pieces of silver foil tape. This is the underside. The orange/yellow painted ends line up with the rear of the marker lights, but seem to have no purpose for the paint. |
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 | You can see the clear LED in this pictures, along with an oddly shaped black item that I can't identify. Do you know what it is? |
 | These four resisters are in the middle of the underside of the board. |
 | The clear LED is barely visible, though the reflection on its leads is pretty bright. |
 | Day two's pictures were taken with this simple setup here. I used the sheet of printer paper as a cyclorama, a seamless backdrop. The camera was on a tripod and I used a Nikon SB800 flash rather than the camera's built-in mini-flash that I used in the earlier pictures. I think you can tell a difference. |
 | Test Shot |
 | Test Shot |
