Walthers Fluorettes

[rrinker]

Walther's tends to use the same catalog numbers forever, so I just checked - indeed, the 353 is the same number on the bulbs in my 1957 catalog (minus the manufacturer prefix). In the 1957 catalog, the 353 is listed as a 6V bulb. 352 was the 12V version, and 354 was listed as 3V.

--Randy

[cacole]

I received the Fluorettes today from All Electronics, and they are different than anything listed in the Walthers catalog. The packaging is Walthers, with a catalog number of 942-353 and a price of 3/$3.75, marked as 8v Fluorettes. So All Electronics is selling them for the exact same price that they used to be when they were sold by Walthers, way back when.

It's strange that they are a different voltage rating than what is listed in the Walthers catalog, though.

[cacole]

Yes, the ones All is selling are frosted on the inside -- I think these must be some that Walthers found stashed away in a warehouse somewhere and decided to just get rid of instead of continuing to list them in their catalog, since everyone uses light guides or LEDs today, and All deals in only surplus merchandise.

I have a set of Bachmann heavyweight passenger cars with lights and interiors. Those plastic light guides are not very good because the center of the cars where the bulb is located is very obviously brighter than the ends.

The bulb in one of the Bachmann cars is burned out, so I think I'll get some of these Fluorettes and use that car as an experimental model by taking the plastic light guide out and putting two of them in it, and see if the light is any better than the single grain-of-wheat bulb.

I run the Bachmann passenger cars behind a Broadway Limited Santa Fe 4-8-4 Northern, and I think the DCC voltage might be too high for the bulbs Bachmann put into the passenger cars, or one of them was just defective from the get-go. I'm also going to experiment with wiring two Fluorettes in parallel connected to an 8 Volt regulator and see what happens.

[rrinker]

Could be, or maybe the newer ones are different. These mention that the glass is frosted - is that the case with the ones All is selling?

[cacole]

The Walters 1957 catalog? Wow, they are old, aren't they. I wonder where All Electronics gets their information about the bulbs being rated for 8 Volts, since your catalog doesn't mention that voltage at all. Maybe they're the 12 Volt bulbs but All experimented and found that they would light up sufficiently at 8 volts?

[rrinker]

I have an old Walther's catalog (1957) that shows them. At that time they were available with 3 different voltage ratings, 12v, 6v, and 3v. The blurb with the listing states "They will give satisfactory illumination on 1/2 to 1/3 their rated voltage"
As for lighting quality, they are certainly better than regular 'point source' light bulbs, since they at least have the right shape and you won't have 'hot spots' of light unrealistically. The 'modern' way seems to be using white LEDs, some of which put out light that is close to the bluish glow from fluorecents, with a plastic light guide to act as a diffusor to spread the light out and avoid the hot spot issue. At the price, it's not too bad, since you won't get white LEDs that cheap, and you'd need at leas 3 LEDs plus a diffusor. With those bulbs, two should be sufficient to light car interiors fairly evenly.

--Randy

[cacole]

Remember the Walters Fluorettes passenger car fluorescent lights? All Electronics, Van Nuys, CA (http://www.allelectronics.com) has evidentally bought out the remaining stock of them, and is selling them for $3.75 per package of 3 tubes, with the matching sockets priced at 3 for $2.25; catalog numbers FLS-1 and FLS-2, respectively.

I found some of them in a junk box at the local train club several years ago, but never could figure out what voltage they were supposed to use, and the Walters catalog didn't indicate voltage requirements. According to the All catalog, they are rated at 8 Volts. Why such a strange voltage rating? Two in series would make them rated for 16 Volts, so maybe using two per passenger car is what Walthers had in mind, since a lot of 12 Volt power packs actually have an output of up to 16 Volts at full throttle.

Do any of you use these in your passenger cars? I'm curious about how well they represent fluorescent lighting.