Lights
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Bright Headlight's

Tonight I made another change to one of my loco's. I tried out a new idea that is absolutely awesome! The idea came from an article that Brandy Bruce-Sharp wrote for Large Scale Central. Originally I converted my USA Trains F3-A and B units to the new super bright white LED's. I was very happy with the results. I used a 5mm LED for the headlight on the A unit and 3mm LED's for the backup lights on both the A and B units. Again, I was very happy with the new lighting effects but the bezel around the headlight looked a little cheesy, oh well... Recently I noticed an article written by Brandy Bruce-Sharp at the Large Scale Central articles page. It was about how he converted his F3-A headlight to a much better, much more prototypical looking unit. The pictures of it were beautiful, what a difference. Below are pictures of my F3's with the new super bright white LED's. Farther down the page is what it looks like now...

My newest conversion is to the A unit only. Like I said above, the bezel around the light just didn't look right in my opinion. I don't think I'm a rivet counter but... I went out and bought a 2 cell AAA MAG-Lite flashlight from Meijer's for about $10.00 after taking some rough measurements of the reflector diameter. It looked to be about the closest in size and I know that MAG-Lite's have great reflectors. When I got it home, I took apart the flashlight and my F3. It all looked like it would fit with just a little work and in the end, the steps I went through are pretty much what Brandy did on his train.

First I took the F3 all apart again. You can see my LED upgrade at the top of this picture. The second step and the most critical in my opinion was to remove the bezel and open up the headlight housing hole to except the new light assembly. To do this I was going to use a regular drill bit but after some thought I figured that a stepped hole would be better. That way I could first open up the hole so the new reflector would fit and somehow create a seat for the new light. The answer was the UniBit in the picture. It worked perfectly. I was able to enlarge the hole and set an exact recessed shoulder for the new reflector to sit in.

In this picture you can see how the stepped UniBit made a perfect seat for the new light reflector and lens. Even though I was using great care, I was surprised to find that the bit didn't chip the paint. The original hole for the light and bezel was just a touch larger than 3/8 of an inch. The new hole is 5/8 of an inch at it's widest point which is the first step in the picture. The second step is 9/16 of an inch and the last one way in the back is 1/2 an inch. Just what I needed to allow enough room for everything to fit.

This picture shows the original bezel on the left with the new reflector and lens on the lower right. It was about this time that I made a change in the game plan. I was originally going to reuse the new super bright white LED by drilling out the hole at the back of the reflector to 5mm but now I was beginning to think that using the bulb from the MAG-Lite might prove to be just as good if not better. So, I decided to make the change and leave the possibility of changing back to the LED in the future an open option.

The next step was to fit the reflector and lens into the new hole. To do this I mounted the reflector in my drill press on a threaded arbor from my old Dremel accessory kit and gently turned it down until it was just the right size to press fit into the seat. I did the same thing for the lens but instead of a threaded arbor I used some double stick tape to hold the lens to the bottom of a cut off wheel. You can see what I mean in the two pictures below.

Once the turning of the new parts were done I cleaned and press fit the new reflector and lens into the headlight housing. The press fit is just enough to keep the parts tightly in place but not so tight that it won't come apart if work is needed to be done at a later time. Now, if you don't know, all MAG-Lite flashlights have an adjustable beam. The adjustment is made by turning the reflector housing which slowly moves the reflector forward or backward in relation to the light bulb which for the most part is stationary in the flashlight.

To get the type of beam I wanted, I held the new MAG-Lite light assembly in the housing and moved it in and out until I had the focus I liked. Once that was done I used some insulated washers (for mounting computer motherboards) to shim the bulb where the beam looked best. Then I hot glued the light bulb assembly to the back of the new reflector. I also took the time to hot glue the back of the reflector to the housing of the train body just for some extra strength. Note also in this picture the wires for the light bulb. The black housing is from the MAG-Lite flashlight but I had to solder some wires to the contacts in order to connect the light to the lighting board. You can use location J5 or J6 of the front lighting board for soldering your lighting wires to. When I originally measured the voltage at J5 and J6 I found that USA had used a constant voltage circuit running right around 1.8 volts. It worked very well with the LED and just as good now with the new setup. Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think.

I tested the new light out side before I started writing this page and it performed way beyond my best hopes. Not only does the new light look awesome but the beam of light was strong and solid for over 50 feet! No kidding. The light shined strongly on my neighbors house over 50 feet away from the layout and the beam lit up the evening mist like a real train in a thin fog.

Update: Per some feedback and concerns by other largescaler's I did a little extra checking... I used my F3 and tested the circuit with three different loads. Keep in mind that the factory circuit is set up to run one or two G.O.W. bulbs depending on road name etc. When two bulbs are installed from the factory, the lighting circuit is running the bulbs in parallel. The headlight circuit is basically a constant voltage circuit running at or just below 2 volts. Note also, the circuit has a 1/2 watt resistor which I assume is to handle the circuit's high heat and it does run hot (to the touch) with any of the three configurations. The table below show's my findings.