Wednesday, January 2, 2013

More Lights

Happy New Year to all my railroading friends! :)

To start the new year with good spirit, here is the progress since the Thanksgiving vacation. Well time did fly in this last one month!

My focus is to install more lights in the existing part of the layout at the moment. All my high voltage (12-16V) lights are installed, so all that I am left with are LEDs and 1.5 v micro bulbs.

First, two spot light on top of the freight house facing the loading dock. This are 2mm Model Power Micro bulbs on top of 2mm dia aluminium tube and inside a thin cardboard housing, having aluminium foil as reflector. I wouldn't say that they serve a great purpose in lighting the area (which you can't expect from a 1.5V/2mm ulb anyway!) but they are very nice cosmetic touch with a great deal of realism.


In the photo above, you can also view the "actual" spot lights made of a couple of white LEDs and you can spot that on the far left of the photo, right in front of the bridge. These twin 3mm LED white spot lights actually make the area light up!


Now, the next bit were a couple of spot lights on the jib of the cranes:



Both are Mitey Lites 1.5 mm/1.5V micro bulbs in thin card stock housing and aluminium foil reflector inside. In the photos, you can spot the thin wires if you look carefully. The connection to these lights were done through the rails on which the cranes stand. Here is an overall photo:


Now, the last bit was a flood light, a glimpse of which you can see on the picture above. For this one, I made a lamp head with six 3mm white LEDs on a 110mm tall tower.


I have also changed the color scheme of the super structure lighting of the container ship, Betelgeuse and changed it to white from yellow. Good quality yellow LEDs are extinct in this part of the world and   I didn't have enough to replace the burnt ones.

At last, here is a view of the whole port from about 500 yards into the Atlantic!