Help with locomotive lighting.


Freightshaker

Freightshaker

New Member
I am working on a spare parts bin Paducah rebuild from an athearn BB shell. I would like to have ditch lights, hood, number boards, even found an orange beacon. Problem is... I have never attempted but I need to, to learn. I really don't know what to order light wise or where. Not too worried about wiring them just getting them and installing for now.
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I am going to take a stab in the dark with this, so don't quote me; however, the "Type of Lights" you most liely need are eithe -

Grain of Sand LED's or
Grain of Rice LED's

They are not a Model Railroad specific light so should be available from any GOOD LED manufacturer, perhaps even Radio Shack if you want to go cheap.
 
Well I looked around and found the more LEDs website. I might get some of those and some fiber optic and give that a shot. Still a little in the dark about resistors for them. Not real sure about number boards yet either
 
Resistors are another matter, but the higher the resistor number the dimmer the light will be. I have no idea what you would use (resistor wise) for an engine lighting but would imagine it would be a fairly highly number one, perhaps a 1.5K or more.

Also, you can also buy "Lighting Kits" for locomotives. I would assume they would come with the appropriate LED's and resistor's, taking the guess work out of it all.
 
Thanks that's kind of what I was guessing on resistors. I'm wanting to do the lighting from scratch so I get a lot more use to it. I have a lot of different locomotives to do over time.
 
No problem but post a few pictures of your work while putting the lights in ... think there would be a lo of interest in how you did it.
 
Mark R. said:
Does this engine have a decoder in it, or is it straight DC ?

Mark.
Click to expand...

Well... For now dc... In the future DCC. I was looking at tsunami stuff for the potential to do either. I have a couple of RSD15's that are like that so I assume that's what they use.
 
The reason I ask is that your approach to the lighting for DC will be different than for DCC to be most efficient.

Mark.
 
Whats different the resistors you choose. I have 0 experience with DCC. My father in laws layout is DC with plans in the future for DCC. If/When I build one I would prefer it to be DCC
 
resistor_color_code.jpg
I'm not sure where I found this, but it makes more sense than anything else I've seen. I have a copy of it that I printed out and put in my workshop.
 
do you want to go with led or bulb lighting? also, are you planning the ditch lights to go above or below the porch? miniatronics makes 1.5 volt bulbs, 1.2 mm in diamater that fit pretty good in the details west ditch light housings. there are different size options for leds, i think 402 are the smallest. you can find them prewired, or you can solder them yourself. you can use magnet wire for those. most leds are three volt and polarity specific, so in dc you can wire them to only come on going one direction.
 
I was thinking about going with led and fiber-optic. Ditch lights will be below on this one , but may be above on others. Not modeling by any specific road, just more or less what looks good on a particular locomotive.
 
While I am not that experienced with locomotive lighting, I am very familiar with LED's...for a 12v system, most LED's require a 560 ohm 1/4 watt resistor. I thought about the fiber optics route for doing ditch lighting, but depending on how flexible it was, you would have to be careful in routing it inside the engine and make sure you have enough room for the control LED's and extra wiring.
 
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