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My grandson likes running my Flyer trains and one of his favorite cars is the searchlight car. This entails turning off all the lights in the train room and watching the light cast shadows on the walls and other rolling stock. But the flickering and anemic light always bothered me. So, using leftover parts from my junk box, I came up with this proof of concept. The light itself is pretty much snapped together except for the two screws that mount it to the yoke. The photos should be self explanatory. I will likely go back to it, tidy up the wiring, build some sort of tool box to cover the electronics, and make it look more realistic. I don’t know if there is a screw base led instead of a strip of three (used them in my passenger cars) that could replace the original incandescent but it would still need the electronics.

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Those LED strips have a max electrical power of about 1/4 Watt per 3-LED section.  You might be able to cram in a high-power (1/2 Watt) 8mm diameter LED.  This would be twice as bright and would allow mounting closer to the original focal point of the searchlight reflector, hence may give a more prototypical directional beam.  The buck-converter would be set closer to 3V (instead of 12V for 3-LED strip); this provides more flicker tolerance in that the on-board capacitor can discharge to a lower voltage before brightness decays.

high power led 8mm

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