To my understanding, the incandescent bulb in a lighted lockon not only indicates power to the track but also "smooths out" the electricity. Would using an led have the same "smoothing out" effect?
And to the lights in the various Lionel transformers, do they also have this same smoothing out effect?
Thanx.
An incandescent lamp is a crude current regulator. As the voltage goes up, the filament gets hotter and the resistance increases. I doubt there is any noticable effect in this case but I'm interested to hear otherwise.
I don't believe an LED would cut it. The circuit needs some kind of load on it to regulate the voltage going through it, and I don't think an LED would provide that. My digital meter doesn't accurately measure voltage on a circuit with no load, and it has an LCD screen as well as I assume an LED backlight.
On my last layout, I added a few lamp sockets under the layout near the terminal strips and wired them to track voltage. Served the purpose of helping the electronics behave as well as provided some light when I needed to troubleshoot wiring. Just pull the engines off the track, and turn the throttle all the way up.
Hope this helps, or is at least somewhat accurate,
J White
As for the lights on the transformers, I believe they are wired as a seperate circuit, so they would have next to no effect on the track circuit. This would be similar to putting the lighted lockon on one loop of track, but not another. The one without the light would not benefit.
Some modern electronics don't work properly if there is no impedence on the circuit. Adding a light bulb to the circuit (such as a headlight, a lighted caboose, etc.) helps out.
I have a Trainsounds engine that was working very strangely. The engine I was pulling it with (a postwar 2055) had a burned out headlight. I replaced the headlamp and the tender started working a lot better.
I have since added lighted lockons to my layout, but not really because of this issue. My layout is very toylike, and the extra lights are a nice touch.
I added LTC lockons after trying to put a train on the track with the power on one time too many. I put 24 volt, low amperage bulbs in mine, so the light is dim, but it is there. I don't run any electronic trains that benefit from the bulb.
By the way, adding bulbs to the transformer's load is one way to get a little more D.C. bias out of a postwar Lionel whistle control, including those built into transformers. The D.C. bias is load dependent.
cwburfle By the way, adding bulbs to the transformer's load is one way to get a little more D.C. bias out of a postwar Lionel whistle control, including those built into transformers. The D.C. bias is load dependent.
So you're talking about lighted lockons or would that include the lights inside the transformers also?
Thank you.
The light bulbs must be wired in parallel to the track. Internal transformer pilot lights would not add to the load passing through the whistle control.
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