Model Railroading > That Warm Glow...

One thing I can say, is the control stand lights on the new Rapido GP38 really light up the engineer figure I added. What isn't helping is they put the headlight LED's behind the cab and use a light tube to reach the front of the cab. You can see some of that light leaking out through the cab onto the nose. And the head lights are not very bright either. Since I removed the beacon to match the timeframe I'm modeling the unit for, I have a extra set of contacts that I can repurpose for some new headlights. For those that have yet to dig into one of these locomotives (not recommended if you can avoid it). The LED's for the headlights and number boards are behind the cab and use light tubes through the top of the cab. Works good for the number boards, not so much for the headlights. On the bottom rear of the cab are sets of contacts that send power to the control stand lights, ground lights, and beacon. At first I thought the wires running from the contacts up the back of the cab were headlights, but then realized they were for the beacon. I carefully salvaged the beacon for some possible future use. At some point I will have to dig back into the unit and carefully remove and modify the light tubes for new LED and lenses to be used in the headlights at the front of the cab, and keep the number boards intact. But for now I will leave it as is as I need to clear some other projects from the workbench.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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Ted

Same with the M-420's...That control stand throws plenty of light into the cab.
Also, the same: disassembly is not for the faint of heart!

Brian E 

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The cab lights would normally be dark, except when reading TO or copying Track Warrents, or at station stops.
The level of lighting there would  destroy the crew's night vision.
LEDs require tiny currents for low light levels.  I have used 40k ohm resistors in line with 402 LEDs for ground lights and they are still too bright.
That is about 0.22 ma.

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> The cab lights would normally be dark, except when
> reading TO or copying Track Warrents, or at
> station stops.
> The level of lighting there would  destroy the
> crew's night vision.
> LEDs require tiny currents for low light levels. 
> I have used 40k ohm resistors in line with 402
> LEDs for ground lights and they are still too
> bright.
> That is about 0.22 ma.

Oh, I know it  Gauge lights like that wouldn't be very useful...couldn't see past them. It's almost impossible to dim LED's wth resistors. Luckily the ESU decoder does have the ability to dim LED lights by making them cycle on and off rapidly, so that you don't see them flickering, but they are dimmer than they would be. I've already used that feature to dim some overly bright ditchlights so they matched the headlights on another locomotive. I need to tone down the walkway and gauge lights on this unit.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR