I am curious about your habits, or recommendations about leaving the lights on in Engines while they are not being used?
Is there anything to be gained in hte life of the bulbs? Is it like a night lite, where you should just leave it on?
If I am running but one engine, should I go to the bother of turning the others lights off all the time, or doesn’t it matter?
thanks for you input.
LEDs don’t burn out if installed correctly. Incandescent lamps will burn out from age, or because no resistor was used in series with the lamp. Lifetime depends.
You may be thinking about prototype rules. When a train is stopped for a meet or tied down for some time, some railroads require that the headlights be dimmed or switched off. If the loco is parked, serviced or stored, lights are off.
Are you talking about “never” turning the lights off? The night light comment makes me think that you might mean this.
If you’re running power to your layout ALL the time, I have one word for you,…FIRE!!!
I woke one mornig at 3am a while age to find my house on fire. Trust me on this one, it’s not fun!
Now if you’re talking about leaving them on only when you’re running the layout, that’s a different story. Go with your gut on that one.
When I was using DCC I prefer to park my engines on a block with the power off…This safe guards the motor from possible motor burn out…
I turn off the light in all my loco’s when they are parked.
Once I park them, I turn the lights off. I usually turn each light off for the night once I’m done running a particular engine. I like to keep the light on for each “active” engine, in part because it tells me at a glance which way the train’s going to go when I throttle up.
During the glorious days of steam headlights or backup lights were rarely switched on during the daylight hours, therefore I rarely operate Grizzly Northern steam with the lights on. A number of the GNR locos do not have the lights connected.[:)]