Questions about locomotive headlights

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Advice: Do not buy ballast type LEDs unless conversion very difficult. I’ve already had 2 ballast go bad and they are no longer cheap. ( almost $30. ) Most LEDs are single pin. Single pin types can convert in 1/2 hour. Connect AC hot at one end and neutral at other end. 2 pin can be a bear especially removing ballast then converting from dual to single pin. Took me 3 hours.

One problem. LED tubes are made of a plastic. For 8 foot tubes use a zip tie at the 4 foot location to prevent sag. Since LED cross sections are not equal weights being omni diretional they will point upward when sagging.

https://www.jwspeaker.com/products/led-headlight-model-8770-locomotive/

<100W and heated

3.2A @ 24V DC (High Output)

1.2A @ 75V DC (High Output)

0.85A @ 110V DC (High Output)

2.60A @ 24V DC (Low Output)

0.85A @ 75V DC (Low Output)

0.75A @ 110V DC (Low Output)

The manufacturer must be a military supplier. $600USD+ each.

Doesn’t seem to far off for a decent LED light.

What sort of LED light are you referring to?

The one RDA linked to. LED replacement headlight for a locomotive.

A bit of sticker shock as a replacement for a $25 incandescent.

We have one of those oscillating lights here at our RR. It’s called a Mars Light. We don’t have if on a locomotive but we do set it up once in a while at events. It rotates in a figure 8 pattern. The story about the name is that inventor could only find one company to finance to production of the light. It was the Mars Candy Company. And they wanted naming rights. It is fun to watch.

Rich

As a kid our family took ACL’s East Coast Champion one year on our vacation to Miami Beach. Can remember standing in a vestibule with my father with the upper door open and watching the ACL’s Mars light on their engine dancing over the landscape as we raced along in Southern Virginia or Northern North Carolina at some velocity North of 79 MPH.

As I recall, there are two versions of oscillating lights. One is the “888” Mars light (I’ve heard it explained as the “light from Mars,” too), the other, the Gyralight - made by Pyle National - simply describes a circle.

You’ll still find such lights on fire trucks, especially in the middle Atlantic region. They are manufactured by the Mars Signal Light Company. They turned out a number of types of lights for emergency vehicles, including the “Aurora Borealis,” once favored by the Chicago Fire Department. The rotating lights on the Chicago PD vehicles in the movie “Blues Brothers” are Mars products.

Some railroads put a clear bulb in one of the positions of a Mars light, and red in the other, to serve as an emergency brake light.

At one point, ICG started using a fixture with three lamps and no moving parts. Two, white, simply alternated. The other was red.

Can the crew replace a bulb or is that a craft boundary?

Which begs the question, how many engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

They are electric powered, definitely a job for a Conductor.