As I have learned recently, it was a practice in the days of British steamers to identify trains by the placement of lanterns on the front of the engine. I am looking to brainstorm with you about a relatively easy way to do this. Maybe with some sort of battery-powered LED? Or something glow in the dark?
Hey Doug,
I think the simplist way would be similiar to what Lionel does or used to do on their steam engines. The jewel marker lights. Micheals has tiny little jewels like the ones Lionel uses. A little square of plastic with a metal ring on it to simulate a lantern and glue the jewels on.
I always liked how the jewels made it look like there was light coming from them.
White lanterns in the UK?
Paul, thank you! This is a fantastic idea.
Doug,
Is there a headlight or other lamp inside the engine, or space to mount one? If so, consider runing a thin fiber-optic cable to the improvised lantern. You could also “tap” the same light source and run fibers to other areas that need a light. It would be more spendy than the ideas above, but possibly of some interest. There will be no heat anywhere except where an incandescent lamp is located, and the fiber-optic cable can reach very small places.
If you have more room where you want the light to show, there are now light-emitting diodes that will mount in an ordinary socket. They come in focused (directional) or omnidirectional, and many colors.
For fiber-optics, try Edmund Scientific, or search the web. For LED’s, check Scott’s Odds and Ends, and/or search the web. New suppliers seem to appear every day.
This might be of interest to anyone who is looking to provide a light source in a confined area.
Intriguing idea. I was loath to try to work off the existing motor or engine pickup. I don’t trust myself screwing something major up. I found a mini-led flasher that I was toying with adapting but it was too big. I will browse some of your suggested websites - I forgot the LED wouldn’t generate heat. I got a few of those plastic jewels I’m going to try too
pbjwilson wrote: White lanterns in the UK?
Yes the lantern in the picture , with a clear lens, would be used as a classification light.
The same lantern with a red lens would be used on the rear of a goods (freight) train that was fully fitted (all wagons fitted with brakes controled from the engine or at least an air or vacuum pipe to have brake continuity to the rear 3 wagons which had to be equiped with brakes). An End of train device as it were. No brake van was needed.
On goods trains that were not fully fitted a brake van(caboose) would show one red lens lamp to the rear in the center and two lamps just outboard showing red to the rear and clear to the front. The engine crew could tell at night when they looked back(if they looked back) that the brake van was still attached. When the train ran past a signal box the signal man would check for the rear markers to be sure the train was complete before clearing the block.
If the guard(conductor) had a problem and wanted the train stopped he would reverse the side lamps and show red to the engine crew. In daylight hours we had red flags to use.
Another note these were kerosene lamps.
Yea I know it’s a windy answer.
Thank you so much, Joe. This is just what I was trying to find out. I got a bag full of ‘jewels’ over the weekend to try out, and will be looking for a few ‘scraps’ of plastic to represent the lanterns themselves. I made myself a brake van out of a bobber caboose and was puzzling about its lanterns. Photos show them seemingly in all sorts of positions both in the brake vans and on the front of the engines.
Thomas has a lantern impression on the back of his coal bin - was that supposed to serve as a sort of clear marker light when he was running light? Or is it a sort of backing light?
The classification lamp display on the front of the engine could require more than one lamp.
The tender or coal bunker of a light engine would display red when running forward and white when running in reverse. I’m not sure whether or not there was a classification code for these displays. Perhaps one of our British bretheren could answer that.
I worked for British Rail for a couple of years in the early seventies but all the engines were diesel or electric. They had backlit panels with roller panels that showed number or letter codes for their classification and red panels to the rear when running light.
By the way these lamps were wicks fed by kerosene and the lens was a big magnifying glass. They didn’t give of enought light to use as a headlight.
Try this link http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/3-sigs/bellhead.htm