Light trail (LT), a novel optical network, promises small switching granularity and good bandwidth utilization. There is little research on LT node until now, especially on its performance simulation and experimental demonstration. A novel LT node architecture that supports 4 wavelengths for duplex communication is introduced. And a simulation platform is built to test the performance of the LT node, including insertion loss as well as bit error rate (BER) and eye diagram in LT networking. The simulation shows that its insertion loss is about 16 dB, which means that it should work at intervals of less than 20 km if without help of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Further simulation shows that a single SOA can be employed to improve eye diagram, increase work distance of 5 km, and decline BER about 105 at 15 km distance or 102 at 20 km. Finally the conclusion can be drawn that the reported LT node has the advantages of simple structure, low cost and low loss, and is suitable for application in metropolitan and access optical networks.