All my LED Lighting Projects Finished

[RkyGriz]

The warm white LED's arrived yesterday and so I was finally able to install them in all of my J.S. cars. I did the D&RG cars first, and while they look good, they are a little dim since I only placed 2 LED's in each car( following the original Bachmann design). I was expecting them to be  little brighter. The problem is that they're not a diffuse type of light and they only have a cone angle of 30 degrees max. That, and the fact that they are being powered by a 9 volt battery instead 18 volts from the tracks makes them a little too dim. I'll probably go ahead and install 3-4 more LED bulbs in them at a later date. The following link is to a youtube video  of them :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-oPCpsGjhM
I also completed all wiring and lighting in my 3 Virginia & Truckee J.S. cars. The coach and observation cars both received 5 warm white 5 mm LED bulbs( which replaced the bright white strip LED's) spaced approximately 2 inches apart while the combine car received 4 of the same bulbs with the same spacing in the passenger compartment  with one bulb in the cargo area. All three cars are now working on track power with power pickups on 4 of the 8 wheels. Capacitors, resistors, and diode bridge rectifiers were also added to help prevent flickering. I also made a short video of them in operation and here's the link to that video as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1R8eTr-jEc
Let me know what you guys think.
Later.

[Joe Zullo]

I don't think you fully understand how LEDs work. They are current operated devices not voltage. At a certain current, they "turn on". They don't get much brighter with more voltage. We use a resistor in series with them to limit the current they receive lest they draw more current than they can handle and burn out. Your track powered cars look swell. The battery powered cars need more LEDs. 

[punkin]

That looks great. I saw in a different posting where it appears as thought the lights went from dim to bright depending on how fast the train was moving. Will these behave the same way?

[Loco Bill Canelos]

Very nice!  Glad you like the warm white LED's.

[RkyGriz]

Hi, Joe. I looked into it and you're right-there's not too much difference in brightness between when the LED's first light up and full power. They're only a few lumens brighter at full track power then they are on a 9 volt battery.
Oh, well. I'll just add more LED's to the other 3 cars!
Thanks Joe!

[NarrowMinded]

I've been thinking of leds for my Christmas layout it the yard.

I'm not too worried about making it perfect proto type sense I have painted them and applied christmas, I'm thinking of buy some cheap solar walkway lights and installing the solar panel on the roof.

Anybody else try this?

Nm-Jeff

[Loco Bill Canelos]

Jeff,

That is very doable,  my layout is gone now, but I did it by carefully taking apart the lights and mounting the little solar panel on the roof.  Depending on the light you use you may be able to do it without a lot of changes in the wiring.  I did it in small buildings and left the LED mounted to the solar panel.   I cut the hole in the roof using a template I made based on the size of the solar panel. I used construction adhesive from underneath to cement it in place. I also used some tinfoil to glue under the roof to act as a reflector since the one in the light I used was not usable as designed. It mostly worked fine but would likely be pretty dim in a large building. I did have to extend the wires from the battery to the solar module by soldering on extra wire.  I used a single cell battery holder from radio shack and glued it on with the construction adhesive.  I ruined one I think by overheating the module when I soldered the wires but the other two were fine,   The old style one s I used did not have the bluish looking LED's like a lot of them do these days.

I did it in only two cheap buildings, but in the end did not like the looks of the solar panels on the roofs, and never could figure out how to hide them to my liking.

One guy I know used those low voltage yard lights that you have to wire by burying the wire underground. Toro was the brand he used.  He controlled them by simply unpluging the little transformer and taping over the little cell that made them come on and off at dusk.  He discarded the tops and clear plastic lenses, cut off the spikes as needed to keep them flush to the ground.   He did something to reduce the brightness of the lights, but I can't remember how.  I was really impressed by it because you could mount the lights anywhere along the wire when doing multiple buildings and even mount more than one light in a large building.  I never got around to doing it because I did no do that much night wiring.  I would not be surprised if those lighting sets are still available, maybe even with Led's.

Bill

[Kevin Strong]

I would suggest taking some 120-grit sandpaper and diffusing the LED. LEDs by themselves are highly directional light sources. They emit virtually all the light out of the end, with almost nothing to the side. That's why, in your video, you've got a very bright "hot spot" directly below the LED, but almost no light elsewhere in the coach. Sanding the LED itself "frosts" the LED, which refracts the light coming from it, distributing it much more omnidirectionally like a traditional incandescent bulb.



You can see in this photo, the reflector of the headlight itself is picking up much more light from the diffused LED than it otherwise would. The LEDs in the class lamps have likewise been diffused, so the light shines out the side of the LED, and through the lenses of the class lamps.

Jeff, the solar-powered lights work pretty well. I've got them lighting my railroad at night. I get the ones for $1 from Dollar Tree, but Wal-Mart sells similar ones. They're pretty common. Some of them I just stick in the ground as is, while others I use steel tie wire to mount them in my bushes.



I paint the holders olive green so they blend in (the one shown hasn't been painted), and you've got to really know what you're looking for to see them. They don't put out a ton of light--about the same as you'd get on a bright moonlit night, which for me is all I want. I just want to see the features of the garden at night.

If you're looking for lighting sufficient to spotlight various scenes, you can find brighter solar-powered spotlight-type light fixtures. I got some at BigLots that work well.



The cool thing with these is that the solar panel and batteries are separate from the spotlight assembly. Here, the full light on the right is highlighting one of the towns on the railroad, while I'm using the one on the left to power the lights inside the buildings themselves. These lights come "stock" with three LEDs, which I've found to be about the same as 6 of the warm white LEDs I use to light my buildings. This particular panel is lighting two buildings--the depot and a small woodshop.

(Sorry, no night photos of the lights; I haven't had one yet turn out to where it showed the effect satisfactorily.)

Later,

K

[punkin]

Maybe this isn't the correct place to put this but I just found this little regulator board with a rectifier. http://www.ebay.com/itm/321781381504?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT


I ordered this today along with some warm white 5 volt LEDs, a capacitor and some resistors. Hopefully my wheels and pickups get here soon so I can try my hand at adding lights to my caboose.

[Joe Zullo]

https://youtu.be/rYGtLzk-qME

[NarrowMinded]

Thanks for the replies.

I have used a lot of l.e.d. for train related items, my main concern is whether the cheap $5 electrical components stood up to the vibrations cheap electronics dont usually like it much.

I have roughed up leds to scatter more light with ok results, what I found also helps is use a 1/4 drill to create a inward cone shape on the front of the led.

Nm-Jeff