I'm jumping into the building / electrical aspect of the hobby with booth feet; my project is a light rail vehicle used in the Twin Cities in N scale. The lighting on the prototype in both directions is shown in this photo; five illuminated on the front (left) four illuminated on the rear (right). The lights adjacent to the destination board in the of the windshields are relatively dim. I've been googling around a bit, and it looks like there are both LED's that you can mount directly, or, you can run fiber optics; given how close some of these are to one another, I'm guessing I'd have to run fiber if I wanted to represent all of them? The rear lights get brighter when the brakes are applied; the TCS M4T can replicate that effect, apparently. Is it possible to get acceptably bright headlights and ditch-lights with fiber? Are all LED's capable of variable brightness, or is that something to look for? Are there any exceptional blog posts / tutorials / threads I should be aware of that would be helpful for a complete newbie like myself?
Nick, here is a picture of fiber optics set up in a KATO unit. I attached the fibers right in front of the decoder mounted LED. I have since fixed the light showing so badly in the cab. Are these acceptably bright enough? I think so. Can't answer your question regarding variable brightness with LED. This is my wife's locomotive (Smoket Bear thing, you know) but she lets me run it. The fibers show up, in the daylight, as well as most locomotives and a whole lot better than some. Carl
Those look pretty good! I've been looking at Ngineering's nano LEDs, which might be small enough for direct mount, and are variable brightness. Looks like I'll have to pick between insanely tiny soldering and finicky fiber?
Nick, You can avoid the tiny soldering by purchasing nano LED's with very small gauge wires already soldered. Mike Fifer, a TrainBoard advertiser, has them here: http://www.fiferhobby.com/html/n_scale_signals_electrical_and.html Trust this will prove useful to you and good luck.
Thanks for the "lead" on those! If those are as small as the "nano" product offered by Ngineering, those would be a no-brainer. At a casual glance on my phone, they look larger, but, will dig deeper on a bona fide computer.
Fiber is not so bad, so long as you start with the right diameter strand. Ive had some luck using a little bit of heat to soften the strand to make tight bends. Doing tight bends does result in some light loss. This might be a big negative in communications, but in model trains it really doesn't make a big difference. I typically paint the strand black accept for the ends to keep the glow under the body to a minimum.
