One fellow in a forum I belong to did some research into this issue. Have fun. Address any questions to the writer of the article.
http://www.trainweb.org/gnw/LED.htm
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Interesting. LIONS buy LEDs at Walmart or Menards, and gets whatever shade of whatever color they are selling. 50 lamps for $5.00: at 10¢ we do not worry about the color!
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Some count all the rivets. The writer did not like his locos looking like a Christmas tree.
My trains do not look like Christmas trees. Here is a train stopped in the South Ferry Station. There are two different shades of white in the lighting. You cannot tell which a particular LED will be until you light it up. I built the module and then lit it up. Guess what? NYCT has their bulbs all mixed up too. When one stop working, they replace it with what they have on hand. Since this station is supposed to lit by florescent lights there will be a bit of a valance on the cut-away allowing peepers into the station, so the lamps will not actually be seen by the peeps unless they get down on their knees to look into the station.
Heck of a way to model a railroad, but it *is* a subway, and subways do run in a hole in the ground.
The cars themselves are also supposed to be lit by florescent lights, but these too put off all sorts of different shades. The original prototype equipment ran the florescent lights on DC current, and they had to reverse the polarity of the circuit every few hours to burn the bulbs evenly, sometimes this did not happen and you would have the north end of each bulb dark and the south end lit up. After a major GOH in the 80s the cars got both air conditioning and AC lighting. Warm White / Cool White, whatever the MTA was able to get a deal on, that is what went in there.
On newer cars the advertizing is back lit, and so any sort of a color could appear in there. On the Grand Central Shuttle, the entire train, inside and out is sold as a unit to an advertiser who wraps the car, inside and out in a particular theme. The lighting gets colored too. You want a Christmas Tree on Wheels, this (or the Chicago Holiday Train) is it.
or try this one.