LION installed these LEDs in series without resistors. They blinked, and after time failed.
LION has rebuilt the llighting with the LEDs each with their own resistor. Much Better.
ROAR
Lion, You are known for your frugality, yet you do a better job than i can even though I tend to splurge a bit. Nice job, thanks for the pictures.
Charlie
Good job on those LEDs. I have been wondering whan you were going to have time for another layout update. ROAR
LIONS do not go up to the train room too much in the summer. It is far too hot. Him must be a Siberian, eh?
Over the summer him wrok on modelboard, in nice cool computer office.
Now him back in train room, but fussing with electricals is not too photogenic.
Aye, but LION has plans, him always has plans, and little by little things come together.
The bluish LEDs turned my yellow stripe into a day-glow yellow. I don’t like that, but apparently only the camera seas it that way.
ROAR
Brother Elias, you of all people would know that almost all LED’s (were these the ones scavanged from Christmas decorations?) normally need a current limiting resistor, particularly if they were originally battery powered, and now you’re using DC accessory power of 12V or so. Yeah, some are supposed to have built in resistors - for the real cheapies (decorations, greeting cards, novetly light-up pins, etc) lets put “supposed to” in quotes.
This site offers links to several resistor calculators, so that could help others (I’m tempted to think Brother Elias scavanges the resistors too - I admit I did that in the 1990s, desoldering them from worn out electronic equipment that still had discrete components).
For some reason it didn’t hit me before…76th Street Station, Brother E.? Not the “one” in Queens, I hope…
LEDs do not need a resistor, they need to be current limited, and a resistor is one way to do that. Putting them in series also works but as I found out, not really very good. LION also has some in series with relay coils to show if the relay is pulled or not. But of course if the LED burns out, then the relay will not pull. But then I can see that issue by the LED that is not lit.
All come from Christmas sets bought for the purpose, none were ever battery powered as those are far too costly.
As for relays, LION busy them by the thousand. 0.012 each. All 1K ohm. no point in buying different vlaues and having to pay so much more for them.
As for 76th Street, YES, THAT IS THE PLACE! As for the signal facing a blank wall, it is well known that the line was supposed to continue, but Hitler and his friends in Tokyo had different plans about that time, and so we were diverted into a war, and the line was never built. BUT THE EUCLID AVE INTERLOCKING PLANT WAS BUILT according to specifications, and thus the signal facing the wall was an intergal part of that interlocking plant.
Clearly the lind did go past that cinderblock wall, for the rails pass right under the wall, but someone obviously filled it in with earth and built that wall. But beyond that wall the terain drops steeply from the Brooklyn level to a much lower level in Queens. There would also have been major issues with water under the Queens surface. That is, after all THE ORIGINAL ROUTE OF THE HUDSON RIVER !!! until some ice age changed its alignment.
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Lion, your layout is coming along very nicely. It makes me homesick for the Big Apple. I’m guesing you modle the IRT division of the subway.
IRT?
Well yes, the IRT, if you realise that it runs from 242nd Street to the South Ferry Loop and back again. And that the Express trains are passed off to the Nevins Street Tower in the South and the Lenox Tower in the North.
But then the train also makes stops at Coney Island, Avenue H, Cortelyou Road, Parkside Avenue, and Prospect Park.
The eqipment is IRT equipment, but that is beacuse LifeLike sold a bunch of this stuf in HO scale. Were it not for that, this would still be a commuter layout with push-pull equipment. That equipment will now appear as a static display, a model of NYP. And I at least will not worry if thses diesel engines never went in there, I have to show them off somewhere.
ROAR