Hello everybody,
got an idea while looking at my sisters LED lights for her christmas tree. They are the white kind and have a long shaped bulb about an inch long made of solid plastic. The thought is to get a stringer of lights and place it underneath the layout. There where there is a building, cut a hole and bring however many bulbs required into the building. The rest of the bulbs can be painted black or covered in black tape to keep the light to a minimum in unwanted areas. Also since the LED part is only about a quarter of an inch from the overall bulb one could drill a small hole in the tip and glue a piec of fibre optic cable in it for other effects on the layout.
Just my thoughts, how about you guys?
Frank
"If you need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm."
Don't know about the LED type - I may have to get a string or two at an after-Christmas "Get 'em out the door" sale and see what they might be good for.
Several years ago I scored big on those mini-incandescent strings - got them for something like 1.5 cents per bulb, sockets and all. Since then I've been using them for all kinds of things, either with a resistor in series or in strings of four across the 6.3vac center-tap output of a cheap filament transformer. Running the 2.5v (nominal rating) bulbs at 60% voltage gives a nice yellowish light. Even if the bulbs don't last forever, replacing them is a matter of pulling out the old and sticking in the new.
I'll probably run out of places to use them before I run out of sockets.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)