USRA 2-10-2 light rebuilt

[Saharam]

jwb,
i believe Bachmann printed a series of their Spectrum 2-10-2's in this manner with big "US" capital letters. In anywhere, it will be an interesting thought to apply this lettering scheme onto the tender of my USRA 4-8-2. The 2-10-2 this thread deals with, will be lateron fully integrated in my 1940's theme rolling stock.
The 4-8-2 will be a little too big in seize for my planned passenger service. Here i think, a 4-6-0 or a light 4-6-2 will be the better seize.

Before i go further, allow me some hints on LED lighting.


This is the way i made a complete loco headlight from scratch.
- a piece of aluminium tube of suitable diameter, you also can take brass or styrene tube if you like, will make the casing.
- a piece of plastic tube which fits into the casing a hold the LED
- a 3mm common LED, the colour is important, more later
- a piece of clear styrene sheet, here in Germany everey business shirt you buy in a package has stiffened his collar by pieces of such clear styrene sheets

Cut pieces of suitable lenghts of the tubes.
Glue as pictured.
Glue a coarse cut of the clear styrene on front of the headlight an let is dry completely.
Then cut of file the surplus material of the clear styrene until you have a perfect front glass.
In this case the headlight was intended to fit on top of the smokebox of an plastic boiler, so nor further insulation was needed.
If you have a zinc or brass boiler, you have of course to insulate the wires of the LED. I did this with pieces of wire insulation of suitable diameter.


The ready mounted headlight. Some decorative elements were added too.

will be continued later, sunday meal is ready...

O.k. let`s restart.

So in this manner i have enlighted my older rolling stock. Also i replaced those pissyellow LEDs the manufacturers often have had mounted.
When you have plastic headlights there is no problem to replace the bulbs or yellow LEDs with LEDs which have an correcter shade of colour.


In the most cases when you have superdetailing parts they are made out uf white metal or brass and are not cored.
Here i drilled the casing and the smokebox front with an 3.2mm drill.
The next step is to paint the inner of the casing silver.


Here is an sortiment of LEDs i use.
From right to left:
- 5mm LED
- 3mm LED without collar
- 0603 Type LED with stranded wires
- 0603 Type LED with super fine stranded wires
- 0603 in a scratch made casing for an back up light


A closer look without the 5mm LED.

And there it is important to choose the right LED colour.
- Pure White is the brightest; it is correct for some modern Diesel and Electrics who have mounted actually LEDs and für simulating flourescent lamps.
- Sunny White are good to simulate halogen lamps in modern equipment
- Golden White is the right colour for steam engines and first generation Diesels
- Super Golden White is for older steam engines which simulates the glow of 25W incandescent bulbs or with an higher resistor still further dimmed for kerosene lanterns

And do not forget the resitors!
Otherwise your LED flashlight will do a single flash and will stay dark in eternity.
As a rule of thump i used resistors of 1.0 kohm and 1.2 kohm.
For more information on LEDs: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED</a><!-- m -->


An example for GN "Sports"-headlights. Sport because it is an sporty challenge to core them and to mount LEDs inside without a short circuit. Remember brass has electric konduktivity
In this case the only way was to use the 0603 Type with super fine stranded wire.
- coring, here it is possible to drill with an 0,8mm drill
- painting inner silver
- make a round "headlight glass plate"
- glue the LED onto the center of this glass plate
- after glue has set,
- slide the wires through the bore
- glue glass plate LED assembly onto casing.



Back to the 2-10-2.


Here the LED lights are mounted on the 2-10-2.
The wire colours are matching NMRA rules.
Blue = common
White = front headlight
Green = Aux 1, here cab interior light
The resitor for the front light is mounted in the smokebox. For the cab light it is soldered here on the end of he wire. You can plug the resitor dirct into the socket shown in below photo. For the other wires there i have soldered short pieces hard wires, cut off surplus of the resistors wire, onto the end of the stranded wires.
On the phote you can also see i have made weights out of roofers lead.


That is the wiring to the tender. The small socket is not visible on this photo, so take a look on the photo below.
I have made a wire order and a stoker engine. The stoker engine is only a stand-in untill PSC will deliver ... (This century?)


I have had made no special photos for the wiring on the 2-10-2. But it is done similar like this one.
The 3 sockets on the motor top are for the 3 wires shown in upper photo; Common, front light and Aux1.


The tender wiring the same as here.
An 8-pin socket according to NMRA rules is glued onto the tender floor. So you can simply plug in the decoder of your choice.

Lutz

Appreciable work by you !
But I prefer ready made led lights from Maglite and Fenix.