I’m trying to find a bulb that is small enough and bright enough to use in steamer headlights and tender lights.Some of the problems that I’ve encountered are:
When I have decoders installed,if the bulbs are not changed out,they of course soon blow out
On lamps that are mounted in the center of the boiler,the installation is OK but many of the bulbs are very dim
On high headlights and backup lights the bulbs stick out of the castings or there is this unsightly “blob” behind the casting.
I would like to know how some of you handle this.Some of my engines have it right,and I am able to place a MV lense in front of it.With a small hole drilled in the lense it lets enough light through to illuminate the headlight and when it’s off it just looks like a bulb
For headlights, I like the 3mm Golden-White LEDs. These are quite small and will give a lot of light in a tight beam. You can control the brightness by selecting the right sized resistor. For my DCC engines, I use a 1K resistor, which must be wired in series with the LED. All LEDs require one of these “current limiting” resistors to keep them from frying and becoming DEDs, or Darkness Emitting Diodes.
LEDs consume very little power, and they run very cool. That makes them ideal for DCC users who must “watch their amps,” and they are good in tight spaces where an incandescent bulb might melt part of an engine shell.
Much smaller LEDs are available in red, green and yellow, which may be what you want for indicator lighting. 3mm is the smallest I’ve personally seen for white, though.
Mike,
I end up using 3mm T1 golden-white LEDs for my headlights. They are constantly bright. They are cool. They are a prototypical color for steam. You must use them in conjunction with at least an inline 1K resistor on one of the leads (either anode or cathode side, doesn’t matter) or they will blow. Black heat shrink around the end of the LED will help concentrate the light through the lens further.
Tom
Tom
That works fine when the headlight is centered on the boiler,but how do you handle it when you have a top mounted light on the boiler and the backup light is on the tender deck,so that there is a minimum amount of wire or LED leads showing behind the lamp housing?
Whether anything needs to be replaced depends on the brand of locomotive you’re installing the decoder into. On IHC models made by Mehano, for example, the bulbs are 16 Volt types and do not need changing.
In those instances where a bulb does need to be changed, I have had good results with 14 Volt incandescent 3mm bulbs with 10 inch leads, sold by All Electronics as catalog number LP-6, priced at 2 for $1.20.
MisterBeasley
Are the 3mm LEDs short enough to fit into most of the calscale headlight castings.I have no problems with the diesels because of all the room in the shell behind the lamps.Steam is getting to be a bear…or am I being too fussy?