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Today at the LHS I picked up a full vista dome RailKing car, identical to one I already have.  It is standard incandescent lighting so I decided before converting it to strip led lighting, it might be interesting to do a comparison of the two; one with bulbs and one with constant current led strip lighting.

Here are the two at 10VAC track power:

Led Comparison-10V-Crop

And here is 14VAC:

Led Comparison-14V-Crop

And finally command power at 18VAC

Led Comparison-18V-Crop



The pictures speak for themselves; there is not much comparison really.

Rod

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Images (3)
  • Led Comparison-10V-Crop
  • Led Comparison-14V-Crop
  • Led Comparison-18V-Crop
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Speaking as a contrarian, to me the LED lighting looks like the people are sitting under harsh fluorescent lights. Not a very warm atmosphere. I understand the advantages of LEDs, but often I prefer the warm look of bulbs in passenger cars, toned down in a dimmer mode.

One easy way I've found to get a softer tone (when running at 17-18 volts) is simply use high temp black paint and paint over about half of each bulb. Gives a soft warm tone, not overly bright, when looking through Lionel tinted passenger car windows, which is mostly what I have.

Painting over lights with Tamiya X-26 Clear Orange paint has also been suggested to give interiors a warmer tone, although I think that would be better used on LEDS given that I don't believe it's heat resistant.

@breezinup posted:

Speaking as a contrarian, to me the LED lighting looks like the people are sitting under harsh fluorescent lights. Not a very warm atmosphere. I understand the advantages of LEDs, but often I prefer the warm look of bulbs in passenger cars, toned down in a dimmer mode.

Use amber LED strips, and I've also used yellow in some heavyweights.  I can duplicate any color temperature that you like with LED lighting and still enjoy the advantages, low power, flicker free, etc.

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