I am experimenting with constant lighting to go in
the car. I will post more details as my experiments progress.
I found a glass blower who blew
glass lamp shades for Dolls Houses. This is the sample lamp shade he made
for my model. The final versions were frosted white.
To test the circuitry a test-bed
was constructed and run on the Stockwood layout for a session. Here is a
picture of the test-bed stationary and all the lights ablaze. The headlamp
and tail-lights automatically change direction. There is no noticeable
change from battery to over-head supply. The lights automatically switch off
after the tram has been stationary for 1 min 30. All the bulbs are 3 volt.
After much experimentation I
finally found some white LED's that seemed to fit the bill. The down side is
that they are 1mm surface mount devices and are a joy to solder wires to
(not). Here they are installed and under test in the ceiling. They are
running at 5 volts and draw 20mA each which is substantially less than
the bulbs I was using before.
I took a quick shot into the lower
saloon and it looks quite pleasing.
Here is a test of some leds for
the destination blocks. These white leds are very bright. I decided to use
indirect light in the final installation.
Testing the upper-saloon lights.
Upper Saloon through front window.
This the lighting unit for the upper saloon destination panel. These are the Proto-white leds mounted to provide indirect lighting. The resistance was adjusted to control the brightness, these leds are very bright and directional.
Here is the panel undertest.
Close up in the dark. I was not too happy with the leakage of light. So I carefully painted the back of the blinds with black paint and found some coloured paper to obscure the led in the route colour.