Help Need HO Scale Steam Locomotive that steams and whistles

[Doneldon]

Martha-

Ah, yes. Radio Shack. A place, like so many others, which used to be a great place to learn how to do things but now can't even make change unless the cash register tells them how much to give back to the customer.

How to wire the lights on the phone poles depends on whether they are plastic or metal. Plastic is far more likely but metal makes the job much, much easier and more durable.

If your poles are plastic, you'll have to run two wires from pole to pole. That's okay because you almost never see just one wire between poles. You can use either wire from your broken Play Station or magnet wire. The tiny stranded wire in your Play Station will be more limp and drape more naturally. Stiff magnet wire will look a lot less realistic although it will be closer to scale size. (If size appearance is a big deal, use the fine stranded wire but take the insulation off of it.) You can run all of the lights on one set of wires and you'll only need one resistor and power source. I can't imagine that you have a wall wart without enough power for ten LEDs as they only pull about 20 ma each. So ten would be just two-tenths of an amp. But check on this site for the formula for how to determine the size of your resistor. I'm afraid 150 Ohms will shorten the life of your LEDs.

If you have metal (probably brass) poles, you can use the poles themselves as one of your wires. Then you only have to string one to make the lights work. The small advantage of this is that wires on telephone or electric poles on a model railroad are very vulnerable to damage. It doesn't matter too much if you bring down "wires" made of thread or the new stretchy stuff which forgives being bumped, but a wire that's soldered to an LED and the wire preceding it means making repairs on the layout with components which go together much better at the workbench.

I think the best way to feed your LEDs on the light poles is to feed them by running two wires inside the poles or one wire and the pole itself. Then use thread or the stretchy stuff for the visible electric and telephone wires. That will protect your feeders so you'll only have to fix thread when (NB: I didn't say "if") the wires come down. If I were doing this and my poles were plastic, I'd cut off the tree at the top of the poles, replace the vertical shafts with brass tubing, bottom feed the power using one wire and the tube, glue the trees to the tubes, and run thread or the stretchy stuff for the lines from pole to pole.

Fiber optics are a fast growing part of model railroading. Nothing does what they do better, although they are really putzy to work with. You could do a fabulous job of lighting your Christmas trees with fiber optics but I'm afraid you'd go both blind and nuts before you finished.

It probably doesn't matter whether you start a new topic or not. Having one keeps everything together. Starting a new one might bring in some different responders.
                        -- D

[Martha]

This is my telephone pole creation.  A Wooden Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil, wrapped in a stripped tape with pop sickle sticks for the arms. Held in place with tiny wire and decorated with artificial garland! These are placed in the foam board along the tracks. There are ten in all.



A string of tiny LED lights are strung along each Telephone pole now and I want to add a "street light" to each pole like Jonathan has done on his layout. I can drill through the wood pencil to attach wire if need be and the second wire I figured to just run it down the back side under the platform or just run both wires top side. Running them topside would be the easiest as they are all taken down and put away after Christmas. Jbrock has the play station wire. I have 22 gauge black/red stranded for the main wiring jobs I do. As my layout is not to scale or authentic scale does not factor really into what I am doing.

RS was once "it" but now with ebay, amazon and a zillion other places to purchase electronics or electrical stuff it is no longer "it". The only reason I have gone there lately is to see if they have something and to buy one or two to experiment before I buy more. The last time I was in RS one of the 5 wandering employees asked me if I was paying with cash or a card?? I said card and he said okay as he was carrying an empty cash register draw to the employee only door.  I still have no idea what that was all about. Maybe he was afraid the other 4 didn't know how to use cash. 

So should I up the resistor? if so to what? they also confuse me with 1/8 watt, 1/4 watt, 1/2 watt. I believe 1/2 watt maybe 330 or so resistor? I know I am sounding like an old broken record asking the same questions over and over, I just don't like electric, I get nervous around it, connecting stuff even if the power is off. Turning power on and having it spark or blow something out, I just don't like it so....... I am so careful on what I should be doing. On that note I am off to RS, need alligator clips.

I guess I will experiment. and see.

[Martha]

Had to share, Jonathan replied back from his project, night lights and as I had hoped he was a wealth of info, not that you guys haven't been but he answered the questions regarding his lights and now I can imagine how he did them, how I can do mine. I am so excited. I went an ordered a bunch of 3 and 5 mm so I will have plenty to mess with. Tonight I soldered 9,  3mm red, green, yellow leds on probably 30 gauge wire to string on one of my xmas trees. It took 2 hours! My mind and eyes are fried! It isn't a pretty job and I won't be posting it here but it did give me practice and next one might go better. It is on a tree that will be in the back ground so it wasn't a complete waste. I got two new xmas trees lighted of course, bigger ones, 8-9 inches tall, one is decorated with little tiny bulbs the other is fiber optic, oh man is it cool. I got a few other things to and the lady threw in a few things I wasn't expecting, nice little surprise. I love buying on Ebay from every day people, they don't price their stuff like it's gold. I paid a fraction of what I would had if I went to a store or bought new on line. I don't think I mentioned I also put up a Big size house village as well. This one goes in a hutch and is not near detailed as Jamestown, and to be honest that is only due to space available. One of those trees just might go over to that one.

Next project is completing the massive wiring that is needed to make it much more neater. That is slow tedious work. Night all.

[Doneldon]

Martha-

Outstanding! It sounds like you are making much progress and, more important, having a great time. That's what it's all about.

                                                                                                                                                                                -- D

[jbrock27]

I thought the Hokey Pokey was what it was all about?

Speaking of Ebay and street lights Martha, if you get tired of making your own, there is a seller on Ebay out of China that sells them made with LEDs for relatively cheap.  They go by the funky name: wehonest_us.

[Irbricksceo]

That name made me giggle..

I'm glad to see you are enjoying this project.

[jbrock27]

..."most honerable sir, we honest!"

I bought some signal lights from them, red and green LEDs.  Nice setup, detail and price, even though I could make them up.  Just not sure for the same cost.

[Martha]

Thanks for the tip jbrock, wehonest_us  I may just need to resort to some of the stuff they have there. It's now a waiting game for me to get the led's I ordered. 100 pcs of 5 mm clear are coming from the New Jersey paid 3.79, the 3mm 100 pcs, y, r, g, b, white (20 ea) 1.95 are coming from China in 3 or more weeks. Shipping free on both. Might need to look into resistors next just not sure.

Questions-

1. can you burn out LED's by wiring them incorrectly or over powering them? Are LED's the same as Diodes?

2. It is okay to solder a resistor any place on the wire as long as it is on the negative side? I want to make "street lights" protruding off the side of each telephone pole I have on the layout.  I was thinking of connecting the first LED "street light" to telephone pole 1, bring the wires down along the back side of the pole, under the platform and up to the next telephone pole, I was thinking of connecting the resistor to the wire where it is under the platform, just so there isn't a bulge showing. In all likely hood I will be stringing the lights from pole to pole like the strand of Christmas lights. These are pencils for the poles, I wish I could figure out how to remove the graphite in the center, then I could run the wire right up the center of the "pole". Okay so "talking out loud" on this wiring thing, icksna  on the under the platform thing! What was I thinking? If this stayed assembled all year round I would do that but since it isn't, it sure would be a lot of work undoing each pole, so yeah forget that idea! But still need to know the distance requirement from led to resistor.

Thanks jbrock! now I have the hokey pokey song stuck in my head! Guess better than the one that's been stuck for over a week, "I asked the witch doctor and he told me what to do"

Yeah Friday!

[jbrock27]

You are welcome.

LEDs are: light emitting diodes

I do not believe it matters even whether it is on + or - leg/side even, so it also should not matter whether it is placed close to or away from, the LED.

Turn yourself about...

[jbrock27]

I will add, that when I install them, I put the resistor on the + leg of the LED.   I am sure someone else can say definitively whether which leg matters or not.  I cannot honestly remember why I chose the + side.

Here is some more web info:

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/219

[Martha]

So a few days ago I stumbled upon a how to on youtube about LED's, didn't bookmark the page dah! but finally found it today and wanted to share. For me, he explained quite a bit that I actually comprehended. He went into detail about LED's, resistors, volts, amps, omhns law, etc etc. He has numerous tutorials. He isn't a model railroader, just does something with model space ships I think. The basics is what he talked about. Here is the site

http://youtu.be/6Msko3wgets?list=PL244BE83D6709F44E

He answered the question about can I burn out LED's by over powering and yup you sure can and yup I have. Bummer cause I think I burned up a really cool set of three lights that changed colors and was going to make Ice Mt really cool. I believe I messed up by using the wrong wall wart. Live and learn they say!

I liked the fact that he kept saying you don't need to spend a fortune on most things to get the electrical stuff working. He isn't a fan of RS if you watch enough of his tutorials and to be honest RS has priced themselves out of business the way I see it. Well enough about bashing RS.

I now know I will be using a resistor for each LED I use on the on the telephone pole street lights. That will save me time and money in the end. there are a total of 10 LED's so it won't be an expensive thing to do.

I have been racking my brain over the lamp shade effect on the street lights I am adding. Jonathan used plastic wheels and brass ones he got on line. My layout is not to any scale, wish I had know about that way back when but now I am just going with what I like. Those shades are going to be too small I think, I got 5mm LED's as I wanted them brighter than the 3 mm. So....... I think I have an idea to try. Bottle caps, I don't drink anything that has them but my neighbor is very fond of MDG or is it MGD? Miller beer! and I have asked him to save me some to experiment with. I might have to do a little bending to get them back in shape but we will see. If it works great if it doesn't oh well. I thought of dimes or penny's but I'd hate to go to jail for "defacing us currency" it's bad enough I rip the tags off the pillows and haven't gotten caught yet! Paint can make anything look cool so I will let you know how that turns out. I am trying to keep with the old fashion theme of the village.

I have read, went over or just glanced at many many many post on this HO forum all the way back to it's beginning. Jim Banner was well versed in model railroading it seems but after a while he wasn't posting. Does anyone know if he is still into the hobby. Gosh he was a wealth of information. I haven't gone thru all the post I'd be a there a long time doing. I was just curious if he still is involved.

Tonight since its already dark out, winter isn't far away gents. I am going to make list of all I need to wire up so I know how much wire, shrink tubing, wire connectors, etc I will need. Tomorrow is a new day and my weekend so I can get started on that wiring project.

So for now........ you put your left foot in, you take your left foot out...........

[Doneldon]

Martha-

Try oversize sequins for the pans for your lights. There are some which are about 1/4" and 3/8" diameter which should work for you since your layout is sorta HO. Use 1/2" sequins if your poles are oversize. You can get them even larger if you are really using pencils for the telephone poles.

Unfortunately, model railroading has lost an amazingly knowledgeable and kind man, Jim Banner. I've never heard a single negative word about him, seen him behave disrespectfully or fail to have great information to offer. He was a really wonderful part of model railroading and this web site. I know I can speak for all of us in saying that we are acutely aware of and deeply saddened by his passing.
                                                                                                                                                     -- D

[Martha]

I was afraid those words would come from my question, his passing. I am sorry to hear that. Thanks Don for letting me know. Peace be with him.

[jbrock27]

MGD=Miller Genuine Draft.  I am a Sam Adams man myself.

Did you notice how your video man is using a Weller?  And "helping hands"?   Also, did you catch how he showed a tip that had lost material from it, like the one you were showing us?
Good videos.  They guy likes to talk, which is always helpful when watching a how to video.

[Doneldon]

Martha-

While we're talking manufacturers, Wen is another soldering iron or gun company with quality merchandise. You might also consider the house brands from Sears, Lowes and Builders Square. Those tools are usually made by Wen or Weller but at some savings on the cost. Also, be sure to check out the soldering kits. You'll often find an iron stand, solder or other items bundled with the main event for only a few dollars more than a gun or iron alone.

                                                                                                                                                -- D