Dcc lighting in coaches

[nick]

Hi All,

After looking at my graham farish coaches i am contemplating lighting them, although LED bulbs are too bright and gow generate heat is there a way of fitting leds and toning them down apart from them being fitted with decoders a costly process over a good rake unless one decoder could control a number of coaches i have a few kato coaches fitted with their lighting kit which always seems too bright to give realism and the light doesnt reach the end of the carriage.

Also of concern is any potential shorts caused on dcc when running long rakes of coaches.

Is there a 'how to article' on the net out there any of you know of please.

upnick.

[pavorossi]

I'm not sure about this but would it be possible to fit a resistor to the carriages? I reckon that if you can lower the current flowing through the circuit in the carriages then the bulbs must be dimmer.

[nick]

Hi Pavorossi,

Thank you for the information i will give it a try later, sorry to the admin for posting in the wrong area many thanks for righting it for me.

upnick.

[Foghut]

Originally Posted by nick

Hi All,

After looking at my graham farish coaches i am contemplating lighting them, although LED bulbs are too bright and gow generate heat.

There's no easy way of dimming LEDs. Fitting a resistor in series to an LED doesn't really work as they're semiconductors and don't follow Ohm's law. You could "daisy chain" them in series with a current limiting resistor to keep it to about 15mA, remembering that there is a voltage drop of 0.7 Volts across each LED.

The simplest soultion might be to put a filter round them or even paint them to reduce the light output. Also Maplin does a wide range of LEDs with different levels of output, so you might find a less bright one.

And why are you worried about short circuits ?

HTH,
Foggy.

[pavorossi]

Originally Posted by Foghut

Fitting a resistor in series to an LED doesn't really work as they're semiconductors and don't follow Ohm's law.

The fact I forgot that sort of illustrates why I failed A Level Physics! Sorry about that.