WeHonest Crossing Signals

[HOScaledWill]

Forget NJ International and Tomar Industries, try WeHonest signals instead! They have more realistic crossing signals, at least in HO scale (they also do N and O scales!) And the signals are not so expensive!

Here are mine!

And they're almost like Tomar Industries signals, except they don't currently have black Number of Tracks signs though I've never had Tomar Industries signals before!

The first ones I got were from eBay and I ordered signals without gates as well as signals with gates (sold separately.) And although you see what you see, mine are custom made. They actually come with a gold mounting stem but I requested my signals come without them so I can play with them on my floor. I got my first ones in June 2024!

And although We Honest also has it's own flasher units, I use Eve Model flasher units and they can make your crossing signal LEDs fade out as they flash though it doesn't always work depending on how you wire your signals and how many lights you have on one flasher units. I did try the We Honest flasher units but had some trouble with them myself but you can and still should use them. I just prefer the Eve Model flasher units!

Later I added LEDs to the gate arms to make them more realistic and entertaining! I added prewired SMD 0402 and 0603 red LEDs with resistors to the gate arms and I super glue the LEDs on the arms. Also try to make it so that two of the lights on the gates flash in harmony with the signals while the third light stays on!

They do make crossing gates with lights already on them but I prefer to add the lights myself.

For power, I use 9V batteries and I recommend you use that and make sure you have at least one resistor for your signals (I'd wire it to the cathode, the red wire, rather than the anodes (black wires.)

I waited for NJ International to make signals again and even contacted them by phone myself but they didn't seem to get very much done and now they don't seem to be making signals anymore. And I can't replace the signals by them that broke! So I gave up on NJ International and decided to try We Honest signals though I really had to deliberate for a few years before buying some. I also had to research the signals and had to be sure I wanted these. And turned out to be a great investment!

Should warn you that once you have tried these signals it's hard to go back to using other signals! But I recommend WeHonest crossing signals.

Two places you can get them:

We Honest official website: https://www.wehonestmodel.com/ You need PayPal to order from here!

eBay: https://www.ebay.com/str/wehonest?_trksid=p4429486.m168239.l149086 May be a little more expensive to buy from eBay than from the manufacturer website.

But go see what they got! I think you'll be impressed! And I like these better than NJ International's though these signals are a little bigger in size if you've had NJ International signals!

 

[HOScaledWill]

Some more photos

I ordered some more signals two months after I got my initial signals and added lights to the newer gates as well.

Some of my signals had some problems including burning out the LEDs and so I've had to replace the signals altogether so now I'm trying to be really careful with them! I've had some frustrations including trying to get them wired right, keeping the LEDs on the gates, the wires getting tangled, and as I said, the lights burning out and having to replace the signals! Thankfully so far these are less expensive than operating signals from other manufacturers!

I also ended up learning you don't need to put two resistors on one signal, you only need one. Make sure you put the resistor on the red wire.

 

[RhB Michael]

Is it worth the cost savings to have to keep replacing burned up LEDs and the frustration of trying to keep the LEDs attached to the arms?

WeHonest also offers European signals and crossing gates and gets favorable reviews from the European railroad community. They are a good value compared with the majors like Viessmann, Busch, and others.

 

[Iron Horseman]

Some of my signals had some problems including burning out the LEDs and so I've had to replace the signals altogether so now I'm trying to be really careful with them! I've had some frustrations including trying to get them wired right, keeping the LEDs on the gates, the wires getting tangled, and as I said, the lights burning out and having to replace the signals! Thankfully so far these are less expensive than operating signals from other manufacturers!

I also ended up learning you don't need to put two resistors on one signal, you only need one. Make sure you put the resistor on the red wire.

Hmmm, LEDs should never burn out. Do you mean the main LEDs in the signals, or the LEDs you've added on the gates?

 

[ShadowNix]

So if your are burning out LED's, you likely have over-current and need a different resistor in series (I did see you had them there!), optimally with a zener diode in parallel to clamp the voltage. You should not be burning out LED's. Of note, the Resistor you use may not be a 470 Ohm one...depends on your setup and diode voltage - I would do the calculations for your setup. I would suggest getting a breadboard and testing.

 

[Kusojiji]

For reference/assistance:

https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/conversion-calculators/conversion-calculator-led-series-resistor

If you have a bunch of leds in parallel, add the currents together.

I usually go much higher in resistance as the leds tend to be too bright for me. As mentioned above, breadboard is your friend.

 

[HOScaledWill]

Hmmm, LEDs should never burn out. Do you mean the main LEDs in the signals, or the LEDs you've added on the gates?

I'm not entirely sure what happened. But yeah it was the main lights. And I did add resistors to them. I learned many years ago never to wire LEDs without resistors! I did give up on LEDs for a while except for Busch crossing signals, which already come with a flasher unit with resistors in them

Otherwise I preferred incandescent lights.

Anyway, despite me adding resistors, maybe I added too many when I was trying to decrease the chances of burn out. I would tie two resistors together and put them on one of the anodes and repeat for the remaining anode. I wasn't yet confident enough to just use one resistor on the single cathode! Maybe what happened was the metal parts of the resistors were touching each other and that may have made them stop working. I also extended the wires by adding more wires (I use 30 gauge, that's the thinnest I can purchase, I tried looking for 32 gauge, maybe I didn't look hard enough or I couldn't afford them.) I also wired them to a 12v AA battery holder, and now I try to avoid doing that anymore even with resistors added! I mean you can use 12v but I recommend just using 9v batteries to be on the safe side.

And after hesitating a while, I decided to use only one resistor per signal, no added resistors. And I put them on the cathode and so far it seems to be working better.

Should also be careful, those signals are a little stronger than the Busch signals but cannot take a lot of punishment! I've also had the lights disconnect from each other and not work as well unless I pushed them back together and they would light up again if I could keep them together.

But so far things are okay. I haven't needed to replace my signals!

Thanks for your comments. Anything else, am I leaving out anything?

 

[HOScaledWill]

Is it worth the cost savings to have to keep replacing burned up LEDs and the frustration of trying to keep the LEDs attached to the arms?

WeHonest also offers European signals and crossing gates and gets favorable reviews from the European railroad community. They are a good value compared with the majors like Viessmann, Busch, and others.

I'm not sure how to answer that one. But if you want, well, insist on having good-looking working signals it is somewhat worth it. As someone in Signalogic Systems sort of said, I was leaning what not to do!

I could just not buy replacement signals but something inside of me just has to have those signals, especially now that NJ International signals seem to be out of the picture figuratively speaking (and I did want to start using NJI signals more and replace my Busch signals, many of which are two decades old now, but I think because of the COVID-19 pandemic or something, there was a major slow down on the manufacturing of NJI signals, and the equipment comes from China. WeHonest products also come from China but seem to be prospering more although to be fair NJI is very old and I think it's family-run, I got emails from two people with the same last name!, and WeHonest seems to be new and young, at least at making signals.)

Also as for gate lighting, technically I don't really need lights on the gates but they're less exciting without lights, especially in the dark. It's admittedly easier just to have light-less gates but not as much fun and I love railroad crossing realism on toy trains, model trains, and in cartoons, which rarely show gate lights! Lighted crossing gates are extremely rare. For one not everyone has railroad crossings with their trains, and not all who do have crossing gates at all, and almost all crossing gates on model railroads are lightless albeit there may be operational lights on the signals. Some gates like Tyco, Bachmann, LifeLike Products, and NJ International put dummy-lights on the gates. Does add to the realism but still not completely the same!

I want to see HO scale lighted gates and if I want to see them, the best way is for me to buy my own crossing gates and add lights to them myself rather than searching around hoping to find lighted gates by other model railroaders whether in person, in photos, or in videos! Plus at least if I have my own I can see lighted HO crossing gates anytime I like! And most people aren't interested in gate lights!

As long as WeHonest crossing signals stay inexpensive, I'm fine, although I've had some free replacements! Others I had chose to pay out of pocket so I wouldn't feel guilty about getting free stuff that should be paid for.

I guess it depends on your point of view if it's worth it or not, otherwise be glad you're not me!

By the way
These gates came with gate lights so I didn't have to add them and these are the only already lit gates I bought. Sadly they burned out too, I should have been more careful. But another problem, you can't remove the lights yourself, at least I never tried to, they have transparent plastic wrap around them and I didn't like that. Plus I was trying to repaint the gates because there was too much red on them, so I bought white-out to try to make the red stripes more equal to the white stripes. I like WeHonest signals but I don't like that they make their gates with big red stripes and smaller white stripes in between the red. I also don't like that New Zealand's crossing gates are like that! Anyway, I decided I'd rather just buy gates without lights and add them myself, at least I have more control over where to mount the lights and I can easily replace a light if it breaks!

Sorry this got too long!

 

[Kusojiji]

tie two resistors together

How were you tying the two resistors together? If in parallel, then you'd be halving the resistance. One resistor on either the anode or cathode is sufficient. And definitely need to insulate the bare conductors. I've blown up decoders because I didn't do that in my haste.

 

[HOScaledWill]

How were you tying the two resistors together? If in parallel, then you'd be halving the resistance. One resistor on either the anode or cathode is sufficient. And definitely need to insulate the bare conductors. I've blown up decoders because I didn't do that in my haste.

Insulation. That's what I'm realizing I need to do. I do have some insulation material I bought a few years ago and plan to use it, I just don't know how yet.

I tied the bare parts together. If that's halving the resistance, in other words, cutting down the resistance (paraphrasing here or whatever I'm trying to say) then I better not do that anymore, I'm only doing more harm than good! I wish I knew that sooner! That's not your faults though, for one thing you guys didn't know because I didn't tell you. But that's it on tying two resistors together, another what-not-to-do for me!

Thanks for all the information you're giving me, I need to know all this so I can manage my signals better and make them last!

Would electric tape also work or no (insulating the bare parts of the resistors?)

Edit: Okay look in the upper part left of the following picture to see what I mean by tying two resistors together.

Nevermind anything else in the picture, I took this picture mainly to show WeHonest what's been going on. In case you're wondering though, the signals stripped of their crossbucks are the signals that don't work anymore! But thankfully I found another use for the crossbucks and gates.



I was able to convert this to a crossbuck-less gate with a shorter pole, the kind you usually see at some crossings with cantilever signals! I plan on using cantilevers and I am hoping WeHonest will make cantilevers modeled exactly after these ones made by Safetran (or RACO)

To be continued:

 

[ctclibby]

Will: Electric tape works, but will loosen up after some time. Better off doing it right and get some shrink tubing for those bare wire areas.

Also, I suspect that the LED's that died could have been from a high reverse voltage. Specification on the ones I am playing with is 5VDC.

L8r

 

[RhB Michael]

I have found that electrical tape, especially very small pieces will not stay together for very long. Heat shrink tubing is your best bet.

 

[HOScaledWill]

Will: Electric tape works, but will loosen up after some time. Better off doing it right and get some shrink tubing for those bare wire areas.

Also, I suspect that the LED's that died could have been from a high reverse voltage. Specification on the ones I am playing with is 5VDC.

L8r

Thank you, you too RhB Michael, I do have some heat-shrink tubing. I just need to learn how to use them before I can but I did order some a few years ago, just haven't gotten around to using them yet.

So electric tape is out!

 

[Michael B]

Those crossbucks look very oversized to my eye...

Anyway, when you get tired of shrink tubing - use plasti dip.
Also, there is no shrink tubing for magnet wire.

One last thing, consider using contact cement to tie those wires down in a few places.

 

[HOScaledWill]

So as I was saying earlier

Edit: Okay look in the upper part left of the following picture to see what I mean by tying two resistors together. View attachment 262315Nevermind anything else in the picture, I took this picture mainly to show WeHonest what's been going on.

In case you're wondering though, the signals stripped of their crossbucks are the signals that don't work anymore! But thankfully I found another use for the crossbucks and gates.

View attachment 262316

I was able to convert this to a crossbuck-less gate with a shorter pole, the kind you usually see at some crossings with cantilever signals! I plan on using cantilevers and I am hoping WeHonest will make cantilevers modeled exactly after these ones made by Safetran (or RACO)View attachment 262317View attachment 262318View attachment 262319View attachment 262320View attachment 262321View attachment 262322View attachment 262323View attachment 262324

To be continued:

And also after these HO and O scale cantilevers made by NJ International and MTH RailKing (the HO ones are mine)

The O ones are pictures I got from Google Images
I know WeHonest already cantilevers but I'm not happy with those and asked if they would make the ones that look like the old Safetran types like NJI and MTH RailKing did and they said they would try.

But getting back to my crossing gates, I decided to convert my now out-if-service signals to short-pole gates minus the lights and crossbucks so that they wouldn't totally go to waste! I showed WeHonest and they told me they got new ideas and now they make short-pole HO gates!

With lights https://www.wehonestmodel.com/produ...r-w-light-on-gate?_pos=8&_sid=ba6569de5&_ss=r

Without Lights https://www.wehonestmodel.com/produ...er-shorter-cgs87?_pos=17&_sid=ba6569de5&_ss=r

I mean the ones they've been making had tall poles and I would have just ordered those but now I don't have to, I can just use what I have! I think that's called "up cycling!" I learned that word from "Carl the Collector," who has autism like I do, hence one reason why I have trouble expressing myself and have some obsessions including with gate lights! But reusing my gates from my dead signals is a big money-saver and I like short-pole gates better anyway if there are no crossbucks or main lights!

I also found another use for the crossbucks on my broken signals

And just for the fun of it:



So there you have it, I can reuse my gates and my crossbuck and number of tracks signs so it's no total loss or total waste! I made the crossbuck poles out of coffee sticks and colored them brown. We Honest does make passive crossing signs but they make theirs out of metal. I like mine made out of wood! And the crossbucks are removable, not permanently attached!

Still, I need to be more careful how I use my signals and lights!

 

[Kusojiji]

From what I could see from your picture, it looks like you had them in series, which adds the resistor values together. If you had tied both ends together, then it would have halved (or less, depending on value).

Series
Rt = R1 + R2...

Parallel
Rt = 1/R1 + 1/R2...

I don't use black electrical tape as it makes a gummy mess and comes off. If too late to use heatshrink, kapton tape works great and is thin enough to be used to hold stuff down without causing an interference issue.

Awesome looking signals BTW!

 

[Canalligator]

OP, do you understand that a resistor is not a fixed quantity? That they come in different values? Do you also understand Ohm‘s law? It is a simple straightforward formula. Use the formula to compute what value of resistance you need. Then be aware, as other posters said, of what happens when you put resistors in series or parallel.

 

[HOScaledWill]

OP, do you understand that a resistor is not a fixed quantity? That they come in different values? Do you also understand Ohm‘s law? It is a simple straightforward formula. Use the formula to compute what value of resistance you need. Then be aware, as other posters said, of what happens when you put resistors in series or parallel.

I guess I have a lot more to learn about resistors than I thought!

On an almost unrelated note, now I wish I did this post better because this was supposed to just talk about WeHonest signals and it ended up turning into more than one topic, about resistors and signals burning out, and I should have made that a separate topic.

I mean I'm sort of glad I shared this because now I'm learning more what not to do but I wish I did two separate posts, ONE about WeHonest signals and ANOTHER about problems with my signals and I wanted this particular post to be positive. Also wanted to know what others thought about the WeHonest signals!

So it's my fault, I messed up, not just on my signals but on this subject post! I mess up on lots of things!

But thank you all for taking time to read my posts!

 

[HOScaledWill]

Those crossbucks look very oversized to my eye...

Admittedly they are. I was hoping for smaller signals like NJ International did. And this is one reason why I hesitated to buy WeHonest signals at first. I wanted to know their sizes and thankfully WeHonest, at least on eBay does provide measurements to their signals. And I measured signals I got from others

LifeLike non-operating signal approx 2 and a half inches (not counting gate). Note, Bachmann gate attached to Lifelike signal.

Signal (LifeLike) and gate (Bachmann) together. Total height: a little more than 4" (inches)

Bachmann lighted signals (out of production) About 2 and a half inches. Note: This is not an NJ International 1090 signal though it looks almost the same.

Busch 5934 crossing signal. Approx 28 16ths of 1". Or approx 1 and three quarter inches.

NJ International 1193 cantilever signal (mast). Approx 3 and one quarter inches.

NJ International 1193 cantilever (arm/bridge) 2" length not counting lights.

I could be wrong on those but I did try to take measurements to see their heights compared to the WeHonest signals. The WeHonest signals seem smaller than the Bachmann and Lifelike signals https://www.ebay.com/itm/1540572419...nd=Unbranded&_trksid=p4375194.c102726.m162918 Click picture with ruler if it doesn't immediately appear as a larger picture.

I wanted small signals but taller than the very fragile Busch signals and I waited for NJ International to make more but I gave up on NJ International and decided to try out WeHonest after 2-3 years of deliberation and several contacts with the seller. I really had to think about this, I didn't want to just go for the gusto! But I see your point, they do look too big! But I'm happy with them and these are some of the least expensive HO signals on the market, at least for now they are!

My NJI cantilevers are too small to go with my WeHonest signals. I mean I could use them together but they would look awkward to me and cantilevers are supposed to be taller than mast signals!

Also the WeHonest gates are bigger and longer than the NJI gates!