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I am planning to make both the class lights and headlight on my old Rivarossi Casey Jones constant lighted. With the advent of DCC and LED stuff, I need a good 1.5v light bulb circuit that is very small and can handle 3 lamps. I have tried to build the diode kits and never seem to get them compact enough to fit in small steam engines, they also tend to get a little warm when run for long durations. I would love a nice LED for the headlight, but the class lights are to small for an LED set up, they would need to be a 1.5v grain of rice bulb. Mike
As soon as I recieve it, I will get som epics of it taken apart, I forget how much room there is inside the boiler for a circuit. The motor sits verticly inside the cab and pretty much fills it up. I think there is room up in the smokebox for a very small circuit. The headlight prizim lense just extends down into the smoke box and the bulb sits under it. It looks great at warp speed, but at normal speed or slow speed, you cant even tell its lighted. Lighting the class lamps depend on finding some brass lamps that are cored out. If not I will just drill and put MV lenses in the factory plastic ones. If I went that route, then a small circuit with a proper LED mounted on the board would work. Casey's engine had a Lima carbide arc headlight, quite powerfull for its day. It was a step up from the normal keroscene or whale oil headlights found on other slow speed engines of that day. So it should have a nice bright beam, so I am guessing a warm white LED would be close. Just aim the LED straight up at the headlight lense. Maybe somebody here has one of the Rivarossi 4-6-0's and can take a pic quicker than I can. I have one coming in for repair work, probably be here tomorrow, I can use a pic of his engine till I get my own.
I never bothered to mess with lights much until I went to DCC. Back in the 70s I bought a constant lighting kit. The thing had no labeling and poor instructions causing me to blow the bulbs. I finally got it working. The manufacturer's response when I mentioned the lack of labeling was to tell me it couldn't have been his product.
In 1996, I was lamenting my inability to do anything with lights - I was still DC at the time. A guy I knew online offered to build me a constant lighting unit out of his components. He advanced it to me and I hooked it up to track power, per his suggestion. It operated for about 10 seconds beautifully (including the working ditch lights) then blew all four bulbs. He said send it back, he fixed the problem. It then worked great and I installed it in a GP60. I said how much do you want for it, and he said $32 so I gave him $96 and said make me two more. I'm still waiting... LOL.
In 97 I went to DCC, but I don't think I really started putting lights in my Super Fleet until 2001. Once I learned the ropes - and more importantly how to do it super simple - using only two different resistors depending on the number of bulbs - I was hooked. I occasionally bust a bulb but I'm more likely to kill a bulb just by crunching it or the wire lead while installing it, than to melt one electrically. Unless of course I attempt to use any non-Athearn plug n' play decoder. About 50% of the time it smokes the bulbs or LEDs, and about 10% of the time it takes the decoder downtown too.
