Headlights on steam

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

We all have ways of doing things and come up with unique methodologies.

I work 100% in steam and currently in HOn3. I have been working to upgrade several older brass HOn3 relics with new motors, Tsunami sound controllers, etc. Old brass and other models never had working headligths, for the most part. Most all engines had superb Cal-Scale brass castings of the famous Pyle National headlight with visor.

Many modelers who bought old brass steam in the 60-90’s would bore the obligatory hole through the rear of the head light and insert what was a tiny,grain of rice incandescent bulb and run wires to the motor. In the 70’s and 80’s, plastic lens came out that had silvered backs and you bored into the lens about half way and stuck the rice lamp into it and then mounted the lens into the headlight body. This was very realistic.

Today, LEDs are taking over and I wanted to mount the tiny, micro, surface mount LEDs into my HOn3 Pyle housings. I do the following…

I bore out the usual tiny hole. I paint the inside of the Pyle housing silver and let it dry well. I next feed the tiny wires out the back with the LED facing outward. I seat the LED just off the back of the housing, more or less floating in the middle volume of the housing by the attached wires. I mix up some five minute clear epoxy on a piece of metal flashing. I gently heat the mix so that it flows and the bubbles leave the mix. Very quickly, after removing the heat, I take a small pointed stick and roll on a nice sized lump of epoxy. I now hold this point facing down, real close to the pyle housing and let a single drop of the epoxy fall naturally into the assembly.

On curing, the wires and LED are held solidly. The epoxy serves are a lens and light scattering medium and it bounces light all around the silver reflector and out of the headlight such that the LED itself can’t be seen in all the glare

2

I also like to use tiny round surface mount LED’s for my headlights but I install them a little differently. I don’t own any brass so most of my loco models already have some form of working headlight. I first remove the headlight lens and discard the original light bulb. I then glue the surface mount LED directly to the rear of the headlight lens using clear parts cement. I then reinsert the headlight lens into the headlight housing and hook up the LED wire leads. When the LED is off, the small round LED looks something like a light bulb you would see inside a propotype headlight housing. When the LED is on, the headlight looks something like a lit lightbulb inside the housing when viewed from the side but totally disappears inside the beam of light when viewed head on. Best of all, the LED tends to “project” light ahead of the locomotive much in the way a sealed beam headlight does.