Chop these up, and repaint them and they should look pretty good with a few behinds sitting in them and lights on top.. Speaking of...
Lighting the carriages stumbled a bit today :(
Unfortunately Jaycar cannot help me with the stuff I need, and I finished up having to go to AliBaba(whatever?) in China. Had to buy 100 minimum order as well ($32 free postage)
Worst part is I am rearing to go, but will be lucky to get the order here for a couple of months, and then I will be on something else, I guess.
According to Jaycar, nobody uses self latching reed switches these days. They wanted me to use an electronic relay instead. About $5 a part ( in lieu of the convenience of a magnet and a 32c reed switch.
As I intend to store my carriages in particular tracks. I thought I might be able to suspend a magnet over track that turns lights off as cars enter siding, or turns them on as they depart. Just noticing though that you might have to reverse magnet to change switch ?? Cross that bridge when I get to it, I think.
Cheers
Rod
I like the idea of a fixed magnet to turn the lights on and off when entering a staging yard. Rapido (Canadian company) uses the magnet operated lights on their coaches. I don't recall them requiring a specific magnet polarity, so I think you should be right with your fixed magnet.
ReplyDeleteHi Rod, I bought nano leds off ebay last December like these https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/T0603WM-20pcs-Pre-soldered-micro-litz-wired-leads-Warm-White-SMD-Led-0603-NEW-/181961147639?hash=item2a5dbac4f7
ReplyDeleteI wanted very dim yellowish lights for my old NSW FO carriages. I intend to hook them up as a rake with a decoder in the middle carriage and connectors to each end carriage.
Hello David
ReplyDeleteI actually bought some almost the same in red, yellow and green. and three wire ones red or white. Tony K then found some ultra tiny ones in colours as well as three shades of white. We had some BLMA scale signal heads and encapsulated three leds in a head and created a nice searchlight signal. What I do need to work out is how to wire the car lights up using led strips. I believe my light strips are 12v with resistors on board our English mate is running his off 3v? Don't Led's need 4.5 volts approx?
LEDs start to glow at a lower voltage than that specified. The commercial strip lights are rated at 12v for full brightness but they may start glowing at a lower voltage. I had a short test strip running off a 9v battery.
ReplyDelete