I sure hope you’re bringing it to York.
Damnation Mr Chandler got page 8!
Bruce Chandler said:
I sure hope you’re bringing it to York.
I hope I’m bringing ME to York. If I am, then it can ride along (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)
I’ve been experimenting with lighting. I salvaged a bunch of LED modules from a sign we scrapped a few months ago. They don’t have any plastic body, just a small PC board with three LEDs and a driver chip. They run on 12VDC. I temporarily mounted two of them on top of the center beam facing up to reflect off the roof. Two may be a bit too many as the light is a bit hot driven with an 11V battery pack…
These modules will operate down to about 6VDC and dim as you reduce the input voltage which is unusual for LEDs. I may try driving them with around 9 volts and see how it looks. Here’s another angle at full brightness…
I’d like to light all of my buildings this year (just what I need ANOTHER project). I modified an old computer power supply to run without a computer that I will use to drive LED modules mounted inside my buildings. I plan to use my track as a power buss since I no longer use it to power my trains.
i followed this tut to prepare a pc-powerpack.
http://www.wikihow.com/Convert-a-Computer-ATX-Power-Supply-to-a-Lab-Power-Supply
out came these power packs: http://kormsen.info/steering/
but for the future i will just use some small banana-plugs to plug into the original plugs of the pc-powerpacks.
Nice recycling and repurposing,
Just a general observation about lighting in our hobby. I have been replacing the CFB lights around the house with LEDs. The one thing I don’t like about LEDs is that they usually come in that bright blue white color, so I have to make sure the bulbs I get are the yellow soft white color bulbs. I haven’t yet seen this softer yellow LEDs filter down into scale fixtures for model railroading. All the LED lighting I have seen across the scales is the blue white lights which work for depicting modern day lighting (post 1960) but if you’re modeling earlier your kinda stuck with grain of wheat type lights, which give that yellow light but have a limited lifespan. I hope it’s only a matter of time before we see the yellow white LED lighting filter down into something useful for us.
If anyone knows of any yellow white led products that could be applicable I’d love to hear about them. 
@Vic - I agree. The sign service LEDs that I use come in a variety of color temperatures, however when salvaging or intercepting left-overs from the trash I don’t get to choose. Most of the signs we build use the bright white (bluish) that you speak of. Running them at a lower voltage does help a bit, but still looks like modern lighting. That’s OK for my RR because I am a modern era scenic line / museum (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)
@ Korm - I used a similar tutorial from the same site. I had a few issues at first because I didn’t have a proper load resistor. I experimented with some nice wire-wound 6.8K’s I had; two in parallel for 3.4K, but it was too much and it kept shutting down. The circuit really wants to see 100 Ohms or under - the tutorial suggested 10 Ohms. I had a 100 Ohm 1 watt carbon and that seems to be OK - not getting hot and the supply is happy. Good free power (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-sealed.gif)
Vick, they do sell warm white LEDs, both separately and in lighting strips. And you can paint LEDs with glass paint, the type used to simulate stained glass, or Tamiya makes paints used for colouring clear plastic parts like scale model car turn signal lenses. I painted a bright white LED with some amber Tamiya paint, and the light is now a nice, bright, orange colour.
The LEDs I used in my MIK build are 3mm warm white. Check out Lighthouse LED for a great selection
The thing is, years ago I bought a bag of bright white LEDs on sale, a 50 count bag. So now I am stuck with more white LEDs then I will probably ever need. And just over a year ago, I bought a string of warm white LED Christmas lights in an after Christmas sale, and I forget if it was a 50 count string or not. So, I should be set on LEDs for a while.
I do like the idea of painting the lenses thought. That is an interesting idea. I know the tamyia paints your referring to.
Devon I did it to my Shay, a bright white LED just didn’t tickle my fancy.
Yeah I don’t think the bright white would be a no go. I have a bright white in my 2-6-0 and I am afraid it isn’t going to be right. I was thinking of some way to yellow it and I think this will be worth a try.
For headlights I’ve standardized on Amber LED’s. I bought a couple of these…
EDIT Jan 2024: Sorry - External photo is no longer available.
from AllElectronics.com for $1.50 each and have been dissembling them to re-purpose the LEDs. It’s not a simple process and the leads are very short but it can be done…
They are still available here: http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/led-155/12-led-amber-lamp-used/1.html
Devon did you post some pictures after you installed the lights on your MIK build? I dont remember seeing any.
yeah I did
these are 3mm warm white
The Wall Passenger Shelter finally got a permanent base and a place on the railroad this spring; only a year late. Since these pictures were taken I excavated a bit more under the base to reduce the step height to a nominal scale 8" at the low end. The base was made from a scrap of 25mm Foamed PVC Board salvaged from the trash at work. Round holes for the vertices were drilled just under size for an interference fit. Joint lines were made with a scribe at 24" intervals. The paint is Benny Moore 1616 “Stormy Sky”.
So, almost a year and a half later I think I can finally call this project done!
Well it’s about time… Mik’s smiling…
No, it aint done! It need peoples, and maybe a pigeon or two roosting in the rafters.