It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Don Gibson Use a BRIDGE RECTIFIER and VOLTAGE REGULATOR, then a RESISTOR to give you 2 - 2.1 volts .
"I like my Pullman Standards & Budds in Stainless Steel flavors, thank you!"
QUOTE: Originally posted by AntonioFP45 I plan on cutting the sticker into 2" wide strips and applying them onto the interior ceilings of my passenger cars to help better distribute the LED lighting. With the mirror image, hopefully it will give the effect of "twice the number" of LEDs.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Don Gibson tampico tony: Nothing wrong with your 'mirror' strips, but some ALCOA aluminium foil can also be cut with scissors and glue'd to the roof.
QUOTE: TRY NOT TO GET SUPER BRITE LEDs - using more is better - to eliminate luminant 'hot' spots.
QUOTE: Train car lights are not blue. Only the glass is - (polarized).
Carl in Florida - - - - - - - - - - We need an HO Amtrak SDP40F and GE U36B oh wait- We GOT THEM!
GMTRacing wrote:Aren't the flickering lights prototypical? Especially on the electrified shoreline with gaps for bridges and slip switches and change overs for AC/DC conversion, I seem to remember lots of flickering. J.R.
On prototype electric trains, such as subways, yes. However over the years I've ridden streamlined passenger cars on Penn Central and Amtrak and never saw the interior lights flicker.
Well, since this topic surfaced after a couple of months in the high-numbered pages, I can give a progress report.
I have completed the lighting project in all 5 of my passenger cars. Two already had big, single-bulb incandescents. Those are original equipment, and they've got to be a half-century old. Still burning brightly. The other 3 cars came from eBay in 3 separate purchases. I started with the boat-end Observation car. I added a pair of red LEDs in the back, and two LEDs inside. These I placed so they were near each end, but pointed towards the middle of the car. With this arrangement, I ended up with reasonably uniform lighting throughout the car. I used the same 2-LED arrangement in another coach, too. In the last car, I found that the previous owner had installed some small flourescent tubes. I cleaned up the contacts and re-soldered the connections, and they worked. The eBay description said that this one came from an estate sale, so I hope this effort has brought a smile to someone in that big roundhouse in the sky.
So, I've got a complete set, all lit up. Yeah, I can notice the 3 distinct colors of the lighting inside the cars, particularly the greenish hue from the flourescents, but I'm basically happy with the results. I don't get much flicker at all on any of the cars, even though I went with the simplest approach - no rectifier, no capacitor, just the resistors and LEDs.
MisterBeasley wrote:Huh? Where did this one come from? I saw it at the top, with my name as most recent poster. I think the forum software has a problem with time-tagging when someone does an edit of a previous post. So, who did let the dogs out?
Excellent question! I was getting set to agree with some and disagree with some, and then saw the date. I wonder if the date gets reset if someone changes their signature, or something like that? But then you'd expect a bunch of new 'old' posts. Hmmmmm.......
Jeff But it's a dry heat!
You guys have got me thinking about the light distribution problem. Being a former lighting engineer for a major national commercial lighting manufacturer, I can attest that indirect lighting might be the solution.
Indirect lighting requires a highly reflective ceiling, usually white. But why not use the bright side of aluminum foil with almost 100% reflectance as someone sugested in an early post. Trouble is the lights would be shining down from it, when they need to be shining up.
I am thinking of using the flat type of LED glued at intervals along a styrene stirp with a pair of wires soldered along the contacts. One wire to the north truck and the other to the reversed south truck to provide current.
Since I am using DC I will need a consant lighting circuit and probably a capacitor to eliminate flickering. These could be placed in the vestibule or saloon out of sight.
Either a reed switch or an unobtrusive brass wiper switch on the car end would be nice too. It might be possible to install a reed switch on the underbody and run them over an electro magnet to turn them on or off.
Just thinking outside the box!
Someone did a project, meant for lighting a billboard, that might work here. You take a piece of copper clad PC board, pretty narrow, and scribe a gap down the middle of the copper, basically giving you two contacts. Space surface mount LEDs along the strip, one contact on each side of the gap. One end to power, one through a resistor to the other side of power. To protect the LEDs from revers voltage in DCC you could put half oriented one way, and half the other. They'll all look like they are on all the time, though they actually will be alternating.