I have a bachman 2-8-0 with a decoder. It runs real nice and has very nice detail. Just bought it on line and found out that the headlight does not work. It looks like a buld in hoseeker.com and I was wondering how I get to it to replace it. Has anyone replaced this with an led? Is there room for an led and resistor in there?
Thanks for your continued help
mike
The PC board in the tender is where the resistor will go. There is room in the Headlight. I have some Spectrum locos. Probably a yellow glow 3mm lead or SMD LED. I have used a 1.6mm LED in one 4-4-0. I used a 1k, ¼ watt resistor.
Go to the Bachmann site and download the diagram for the loco and tender.
http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/prod_serv.php
Rich
Ok, just realized, not enough info.
Is this being run on DCC or DC?
With or without a on board decoder?
These locos have come with 12 volt light bulbs as far as I know so far.
Is this new from on line loco company or private buy such as ebay?
You might consider DCC electrical questions in the DCC Electrical forum.
Rich
No, the latest years they have all come with a ugly yellow LED… I replace all of mine with warm white LED’s.
If you want an oil lamp light, the yellow glow work very well. If you want a incandescent light, go with what the previous poster suggest. I model 1900 and oil lamps where still used. If a carbon arc lamp, a quite bright light came out of those but I think the headlight on the 2-8-0 would have been for incandescent lamps.
What is nice is to have a headlight that actually shines a ways down the track a little ways.
Of course the issue comes up, did your railroad company ever use headlights during the day?
Rich
First, you need to remove the boiler shell and determine if it is a bulb or an LED. If it’s a bulb, you can replace it with an LED and put the resistor in the tender (trace the colored wire from the bulb to the tender, through the connector). If it’s an older Connie, it is probably a 12v bulb. If it were me, I would replace the 12v bulb with a 1.5v micro bulb from Miniatronics (and others), by removing the light pipe from inside the boiler that inserts into the headlight housing, and slip the bulb directly into the housing. Since you’re running DCC, you’ll need to insert a resistor into the circuit to compensate for the over-voltage to the bulb.
Since I run DC, I removed the board in the tender, replaced it with a circuit from Mike Rollins’ site: http://www.mrollins.com/constant4.html And basically just looped the motor connections from pickup to motor.
The incandescent bulb inside the headlight looks MUCH better than that light pipe arrangement, which doesn’t transfer light well to the lens inside the housing.
Sorry for not responding back to everyone who threw some help my way. I have been very busy getting ready for a new job. Studying for a new airplane the last 3 weeks has taken up all my time and will still do so for the next 2 weeks while in sim training.
I an putting the project on hold until later next month. From what I can tell there is no easy way to get to the bulb.
I will report what I find.
Thanks
Mike
Is it a “DCC Equipped” engine with one of the cheapo decoders?? I suppose before tearing the engine apart you could try removing the tender shell and plugging in a better quality decoder and see if hitting “F0” makes the light come on.
p.s. if a decoder is plugged into an eight-pin plug backwards, the headlight normally doesn’t work, so you could check that out too…