Am I the only person who hates LED lighting

Well, l don't know if you were trying for comedy, and to get on the Late Show, but l found your posting amusing...except for the $150 part.  Not funny! Seems like they could use material in LED's to look like incandescents....

I would agree that the incandescent lights are more prototypical of yesteryear, but I really like the LED lighting for home, tools, train room and trains.  I just dim them down if they too bright.  I've never had one fail so far.  

I would suggest getting the "warm white" 2700K leds and try them.  

Nope; it’s LED’s for me! 👍

The only place I don’t like LEDs is headlights.

Steve

It's all about color temperature. I use 2700K LEDs for anywhere that color rendition matters, like my layout. They give me the warmer incandescent type, and "nostalgic",  feel.

In my workshop, and my layout utility lights, I use the higher degree K lights (above 3000K)  to give me a bright, almost blue, light for working on the layout.

Pay attention to this and it is easy to get the desired effect you want for different areas of the layout or home.

TJ

I prefer and use incandescent lamps on my mainly pre/postwar layout. LEDs just can't match that even light distribution and classic charm.

As for LED lighting in the household, I use flicker free warm white lamps that have the Edison screw; None of these nonserviceable LED fixtures are welcome.

I do not hate LED lighting, but they can produce visual annoying results as you mention in your post. When kit bashing and installing LED strips to my Lionel mint cars, I will include a resistor to help reduce the brightness. So far, I have experienced great success with blue LEDs.

enjoy your toy trains...

I have a mix of incandescent and Led bulbs on my layout and think LEDs are ok for certain items. For example I prefer an led bulb in my ZW and Z transformers as the incandescent 6 volt bulbs tended to burn out too often. As Don pointed out I prefer the look of incandescent bulbs.

LEDs have their place. I prefer incandescents for most applications but LEDs are best for passenger cars if you like to run long trains. Less for their color, more for their ability to save transformer power.

Pete

I'm liking them less and less for headlights.

@Norton posted:

LEDs have their place. I prefer incandescents for most applications but LEDs are best for passenger cars if you like to run long trains. Less for their color, more for their ability to save transformer power.

Pete

How were you powering the Menard's building??  Mine has lasted, now, almost 4 years w/o a hitch.  I power using a ZW (AC) transformer, through AC-DC adjustable buck converters running at about 3.5 volts DC (the Menard's power warts run at 4.5 volts DC).

I'm very nit-picky about lighting in my house - less so with my trains.  I have yet to find an LED bulb ("warm-white", "2700K" or otherwise) for the lamps and light fixtures that comes anywhere near the quality of light from a standard incandescent soft-white GE bulb of yore.

For trains, the power savings is definitely a bonus - however I wish the manufacturers would avoid the cool-white LEDs.  They do not look good at all IMO, especially when mixed with incandescent bulbs.

I haven't tried the orange paint idea, but another thing to look into is Rosco lighting gels.  One sheet and you could probably cover every bulb in your layout.  Look at the CTO (Color Temperature Orange) ones. They come in increments of light transmission to convert different white points (Kelvin) to another.  https://us.rosco.com/en/products/catalog/roscolux  

Nothing is perfect, but I don't long for a romanticized past that never really existed.

Lower power draw, longer life, and minimal heat - LEDs for me. 

I've yet to see one melt the roof of a passenger car.

I run mostly Lionel PW passenger trains and my problem was that many would barely register the interior lighting without cranking up the transformer. Then you end up with a speeding train ready to fly off the tracks. Converting some of them to LEDs improves this issue. And LEDs also help to reduce classic PW lighting flickering.

Why are you laying your head on the tracks? That is why there are so many accidents and death when a train hits a vehicle or person. LED you can see the train so get up off the track. LOL

I've been using warm white 3mm LEDs with 470 ohm resistors for headlamps. Nice bright, focused, beam that looks close to incandescent light and doesn't blind you.

Honestly, I replaced all of the 2x4 fluorescent fixtures in my train room and the difference is incredible and I would never go back.  The room is so much brighter, the lights won't cause fading as they do not emit ultraviolet rays, and I don't have to screw around with bad bulbs or starters.  I am sure the fixtures will wear out over time, but they are so much better than the old ones.  After my positive experience with the train room, I swapped out all of the incandescent bulbs in the house with the LED bulbs and couldn't be happier.  

Here is a look at the train room before swapping fixtures

Notice how the room has a yellowish look to it.

Here is the same wall after going to LED fixtures.

It is like night and day in the room.  

As for the trains, well they are prewar, so I am not converting any of those to LED.  

What's not to like about LED lighting these days especially now that they are so cheap, efficient and plentiful? Now that I am at the point of putting interiors in my buildings I am finding them indispensable. 

I replaced the light fixtures in both the train room and the workshop with track lighting using LEDs.  These are 4100 degree lights that give off a sunlight effect.  I love them.

Wherever possible, I plan to use accessories and lights with LEDs rather than bulbs.  Cost, long-life, and reduced electrical drain are the reasons.  I have calculated the amps that will be required for all the lighted buildings on the layout.  With bulbs, I would need more electrical power. 

So to answer your question, yes.  You might be the only one who hates LED lighting.    

Best,

George 

LEDs require a lot less power. I think that is one of the major incentives in society. And other benefits are the long life (admittedly there are companies producing faulty products), and choice of color temperature. I prefer 3500K in most of the house, and 5000K in the garage and ham radio and workbench area. A magnifier with a ring of LEDs around the lens is a real boon to the workbench. I might use 2700K in O Gauge cars and accessories.

Yes.

-Crank

@DGJONES posted:

I also wish I could take the LED's out of the wonderful buildings I have purchased from Menards and Woodland scenics.  I really prefer the warm glow that the grain of wheat bulbs provide in the majority of my buildings.  But try to get to all those LED's that are installed.  Not to mention the LED lights that went out in my Menards American Power and Light building.  It is a good looking building but not so much without any lighting. 

You're blaming the type of lighting for specific color choices made in manufacturing specific products. As for the LED's that went out in your building, that's not the fault of the technology, but rather the implementation of the technology.  I'd bet money that the problem is not the LED's, but rather the shoddy wiring.  That would happen just as often with incandescent bulbs.

I use LED's from yellow to bright white for upgrades, depending on the specific requirement and time period.  For most steam, I use some really great 2700K LED's that look a lot more like the headlight that a steamer would have than the wimpy little incandescent bulb.

@DGJONES posted:

As for trains, how odd is it to watch a steam engine come down the tracks with a super bright LED head lamp blinding you!  Or the unbelievably bright LED headlamp in the 3rd Rail union Pacific SD diesel.  This one leaves my eyes unable to refocus for several seconds after the light shines in my eyes as it comes around a curve.  (Just so you know, I really enjoy watching a beautiful engine and train come around a curve toward me.)

Again, you're blaming the LED technology for the manufacturer's choices of the product.

If you like watching a beautiful locomotive and train come around a curve toward you, surely you've noticed how bright the headlights are, right?  I love the look in subdued lighting of the headlight shining off the rails as the train come toward me, that looks exactly like what you'd see with a real prototype in the same circumstances.

The bottom line is I can make the LED lighting looks like the incandescent lighting, even the same brightness.  However, I choose not to as sometimes the brighter headlight is soooo much better looking.

If you get to talking about passenger car lighting, it's no contest!  Again, I can make the color temperature anything you like, simply by selecting the proper LED for the job.  However, the difference in the quality of the lighting will be very apparent!

• Even lighting throughout the car as you would see in the real prototype.
• Power consumption of 5%-10% of the same car with incandescent lighting.  This really matters with long passenger trains!
• Variable intensity to match my preference in lighting, most incandescent lighting in passenger cars is WAY too bright for me.
• Flicker-free operation, nothing annoys me more than to see a passenger train coming that looks like it's got strobe lights in every car!

Used properly LED lighting is far superior to incandescent lighting in almost every way.

Here's the color chart I speak of when talking about LED colors.

When converting house lighting to LED I made sure to use 2700K lights. I don't like bright white lighting and 2700K is nice and warm.

Having stood in the light cast by the prototype on a dark night I can attest that those super-bright LED model locomotive headlights look quite prototypical.  My only gripe is that they seem to always be aimed wrong and thus don't light up the track ahead of the train.

NWL: WOW!  I might just be forced to eat my own words afterall?  I certainly can see the difference.  I love your wall of trains!  Looks a lot like Chester Holley's WOT where he had much of his tinplate collection on display in the hall of his home that came in off the side entrance on Himes Avenue in Tampa, FL.

I'd like to see OGR consider printing a special stand alone publication (NOT part of an issue of O Gauge Railroading is understood) from members of the great OGR family after OGR receives photographs of WOT collections that have been placed on display in homes, office, anywhere, with a cut off date to be determined by the OGR staff of course!

If you believe this is a sound idea, please raise your hand.  Not to worry, you won't be called to the head of the class!

@geysergazer posted:

My only gripe is that they seem to always be aimed wrong and thus don't light up the track ahead of the train.

I try to get any LED's pointed correctly in any upgrades I do.

One thing I have learned about LED lighting.  While the LED lights may last a life time, the problem many times is the electronics that make them work specifically the boards that they are wired into.  LEDs may last many years or decades but I have found that the boards malfunction WAY before the lights go out.  If your LEDs don't work, it is not likely an LED problem.  So much for the marketing used to sell them based on how long the LED will last rather it should be based on how long the electronics will last ... different story

Good point Alan, properly installed, LED's should outlast any of us.   I'm not so sure about some of the other parts.

Virtually every lighted fixture in my home is LED, and that includes the train room and trains. I generally have no problem with them; like the fact that they do not generate heat; and when the whole house is LED-equipped, you notice a significant difference in your electric bill.

Other than my oven bulbs and one outside light fixture that isn't LED compatible, I'm 100% LED in my house.  Given that I have a number of people that don't understand the concept of turning off the lights when you leave a room, that is probably saving me a ton of money.

@johnstrains posted:

I run mostly Lionel PW passenger trains and my problem was that many would barely register the interior lighting without cranking up the transformer. Then you end up with a speeding train ready to fly off the tracks. Converting some of them to LEDs improves this issue. And LEDs also help to reduce classic PW lighting flickering.

For me it depends...on whether the existing incandescent lights do the job - some of the older PW engines draw a lot current, demanding a higher setting on the ZW, which in turn keeps the headlight brighter. If the lighting is non-existent or not up to snuff, LEDs get installed, albeit they must be the warmer versions. Never had much luck colorizing the cool white LEDs, so I just buy warm versions.

I love the flicker free aspect of an LED which, of course, requires a diode and a decent size capacitor to make that work. I love the evenness of interior lighting using an LED strip in a passenger car - but that very evenness has brought me to see the need for variations at each window - real trains just aren't evenly lighted. I love the low power consumption, I love the longevity - which only occurs when you use a diode and adjust the resistor to draw 20ma or less (rule of thumb applied.)

I would like to see an incandescent flickering firebox in order to compare it to the LED's flickering light box - does anyone make them?

And finally, by using the cheap, cheap regulators available today, along with the correct current limiting resistors, I can get my engines and cars to illuminate almost fully when the ZW handle is only slightly advanced, and then remain constant throughout the middle and upper ranges of the throttle. I have even powered a couple of them directly off the regulator with no current limiting resistor by carefully measuring current at initial setup and limiting to 20ma or less - a bit of a touchy procedure as most multiturn pots get pretty touchy down in that range! The advantage to that method is that you have full brilliance lighting even at the lowest voltage coming out of a ZW

In short, I like 'em!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Given that I have a number of people that don't understand the concept of turning off the lights when you leave a room, that is probably saving me a ton of money.

Amen!!! Man, you are totally preaching to the choir! Please feel free to stop by and train my family members 

No heat, reduced current consumption, longer life. I love these things...

I don't care about being prototypical at all, I love LEDs.  I hate the grain bulbs in headlights of my older locomotives, so dim and they don't light anything up when running in the dark.  The LED headlights are awesome, they really light things up.  I also hate the yellowish lighting, I much prefer the bight white for headlights and in passenger cars.

I like the LEDs. The color charts make it handy to get the light you want.  I have a low temp LED bulb in my living room and I love it but I sure would hate to have the 5000K LED bulbs in there, that I have in my garage. Those are awesome for garage work but probably not for hanging out in the living room. 

I use LEDs in some fixtures in my house and sheds; the quality of the lighting is sometime deplorable.  I don't care whether the packaging says it is in the same range as an incandescent, my eyes can see the difference.  Many times, it doesn't matter.  Sometimes it does.

It matters in miniature lighting.  I have yet to find a good LED headlight on a locomotive.  Too bright, too white.

It matters in holiday lighting.  I absolutely refuse to use LEDs for Christmas, for example.  They are cold and ugly.  None can match the warm cheer of C-6s, C-7s, C-9s, or even the plug in miniatures.

I am willing to pay for the extra juice to have good looking lighting where it counts.

And, whether it be the LEDs themselves of the circuitry that powers them, I really object to a bulb that is supposed to last "22 Years!" dying in fewer weeks, especially given the hyper-inflated prices.  I am not willing to pay for that.

I have a Lionmaster T1 and the LED headlights have a definite greenish color to them.  Very odd.  I'll be experimenting with the orange paint or finding different LEDs.  And the red marker lights on the tender are unrealistically laser-bright.

This is disapointing considering the cost of a steamer. Selecting the right LEDs is a matter of due diligence in component selection, not necessarily cost.  The customer shouldn't have to modify the headlight LEDs to make them look good.

Dale

From a room lighting standpoint, be aware that LEDs dim as they age.  Yes, they last 11 years, but at the end of the 11 years they are only 70% as bright.

Dale

For layout lighting I went from 2700K halogens to 3100K LEDs and then finally to 5000K LEDs, all in PAR20 form for my track lighting. I highly recommend trying a few different brands and reading the packaging carefully. They call 3100K Bright White and 5000K Daylight but it's mostly marketing from what I can see. The other factor is CRI, the higher the better (and more $$). The Home Depot stuff is good enough I think and that's what I run. Here are some compare-o shots via iPhone. You can see even with a quick pic the diff in color temp in the first shot. You can see the 'stripe' right in the center of my yard in the second shot with one or two 5000s in place among the 3100s. I was really interested in getting a more blue sky and was pleased that is seemed to render greens a little nicer too.