I found a book that is for electronic beginners like me, and I recommend it for folks who want to learn by playing with the pieces and a 9V battery.
"Make: Electronics" by Charles Platt, and published by O'Reilly is well worth the $19.88 I paid for it on Amazon.com. The content is "Learning by discovery." I call it playing! It's a hands on primer for new electronics enthusiasts.
Before I leave the podium, I want to mention how inexpensive electronic components like LEDs, rectifier bridges, diodes, resistors, capacitors, potentiometers and transistors are. Buy them on eBay or mail order houses like Mouser, Avnet, Digikey and others. You can get started for about $10, and the book gives you a shopping list for each chapter.
I just converted a Lionel Floodlight Tower that used 8 bulbs costing $48 with 8 LEDs, the whole project costing about $6. The LEDs are brighter than the bulbs, they produce no noticeable heat to warp / melt the plastic tower, and the LEDs will last thousands of hours at 12 to 14 Volts AC!
I also just bought a reel of LEDs on a flexible plastic strip for $9.70. The strip is 5 meters long, and it has 300 warm white LEDs that can be cut off in lengths of 3 or more LEDs which are ideally suitable for lighting passenger cars, station platforms, etc.
