LED lighting can replace fluorescent and incandescent over trains

Light Emitting Diode lighting can replace fluorescent and incandescent lighting over the train layout in the train room.

On the World Wide Web there are many websites that sell LED lighting.

One of the companies I have heard of is C. Crane at www.ccrane.com .

The LED lighting will use less energy than the standard bulbs.

LEDs generate little heat.

LEDs will not produce wavelengths of light that can harm plastic like fluorescent bulbs.

With LEDs one will not have to constantly replace burnt-out fragile bulbs.

It will be more expensive up-front but should pay-off over time.

Andrew

LED’s don’t produce heat but the electronics to control the voltage sure do… bummer is when the chips go… your in the dark…

How about Halegen lights…I sort of like that warm sunlight look…just don’t touch the bulb… ouch that baby’s hot…

makes you ask the question how about High Intensity Discharge lighting…to blue?

I do not understand your statement “J.Daddy”, “Electronics control”. The only thing you need is a resistor for the voltage of your D.C. supply and/or diode for A.C… only the tricolor - multicolor secquancing diodes have a micro processor chip in the unit.

That or a read out modual.

A standard LED only has the emitting material in it.

we are studing this now for LED headlamps… how do you get rid of the heat in the resistors…w/o damaging the rest of the electronics…

A resistor is the simplest ballast for an LED, particularly in a DC circuit, and usually dissipates as much energy as the LED and often much more; but it is not the only possibility. A reactive ballast dissiplates no energy in principle; and a current-regulated switching power supply is very well suited to driving LEDs, at very high efficiency.

The color rendition of white LEDs can be quite poor; but this may improve. White LEDs generally use phosphors to produce the full spectrum, from their intrinsic blue or ultraviolet light, much like fluorescent lamps. There is some eye-safety concern over the intense blue light that they produce.

http://www.luxeonstar.com/sub_category.php?id=1429&link_str=1429

These two quotations about luxeon LEDs seem a little at odds:

"Non Toxic - No mercury (Hg), lead (Pb) or phosphor powders"

http://www.luxeonstar.com/item.php?id=5527&link_str=1429&partno=EVE25T8-48-S4

“LUXEON® LEDs use a patented conformal phosphor coating process that uniformly coats the LED with phosphor.”

http://www.lumileds.com/technology/whitelighting.cfm

Perhaps the loophole is in the word “powders”.

I bought some from a Co. advertising one time in CTT. Tiny things [yes tiny]. Put them in the noses of dummy engines for lighting. Great and bright. These are designed to work on 18 to 20 volts. Would post the company name but they are upstairs and I am not.

They also have an expected life expectancy of 100,000 hours. That works out to over 11 years of continuous use, something like 30-40 years typical use. There was a web site that was talking about the potential of having to write these type of light bulbs into your will.