lionel double floodlight tower

The LED bulbs might work but IMO they are not bright enough. I hard wire 5 chip LEDs to my towers. It is a bit of work but I liked the results. Marx conversions are shown here

LINK

Dale H

Dale H, Do you know where i could get the 2 pin led bulbs with the resisters & whatever else is needed  already in the bulb to just be able to pull the old bulbs out & push the led's right in?

Lionel is coming out this year with a double floodlight tower with LED bulbs in them.

There are a couple more options.

If these are the same bulbs that are in the #6-12927 yard lights, you can replace the existing bulbs in them with 5mm LED's, with some customizations and modifications. I don't believe there are any drop in replacement bulbs for the #6-12927 type bulbs? You will have to make a low voltage power supply for them. There was an article in the other toy train magazine a few months ago about converting the #6-12927 yard lights that included a circuit to operate them with. If you are interested, I will find the issue and let you know which one it was.

As Dale H says above, they may not be bright enough? Although if they are the same bulb as in the #6-12927 yard lights, these were not real bright with their standard bulbs, at least I didn't think they were. 

Another more expensive, but much easier option is in the new 2015 Lionel catalogs. In the Ready-to-Run catalog, on page 113 Lionel is offering both the 8 light and 16 light towers with LEDs already installed, no specially made power supplies needed. However, they are a bit more expensive than the regular incandescent bulb light towers.

These are:

#6-82012 - 8 LED light tower

#6-82013 - 16 LED light tower

Gerald

I don't think you could contain all that in one small assembly. With a 100ma LED there would be a lot of heat generated. However if you hard wire in series there is a lot less heat wasted by the resistor. If you have 12 volts input you could wire the LEDs in series of 3 or 4 maybe with a capacitor with one resistor for each 4. Most pre assembled LEDs are 20 ma. With that if wired singly at 12 volts input, each resistor would use about .2 watts,16 LEDs would waste about 3 watts. With a 100 ma LED it would use 1 watt per LED if wired singly.. Thats a lot of heat to shed in a small space. 16 LEDs would be 16 watts wasted. However if we wire in series of 4,the 4 resistors would use only .1 watts each or waste about a half watt for the whole tower of 16 lights. The 100 ma LEDs would be much brighter and actually look like a flood tower.  I have not seen the tower but assume 8mm LEDs could be wedged in. It is a bit of work to do not not really hard at least for the Marx towers I have done. If the 16 100ma LEDs were wired properly in series the whole tower would use maybe 5 watts and put out 4 times the lights as standard LEDs.  

Dale H

looking at a pic of the tower on Ebay,it looks like only 3mm ones would fit in. These would be 20 ma but I would still hard wire in series as mentioned. 

Dale H

rtr12, I have already converted my yard lights to led's,i used the wire harness from evans design,it was easy to do,there harness had everything built in,but as far as putting all the parts together my self,i don't think i have enough knowledge to do it,i have to think more about going that route,i used 5mm led bulbs in my yard lights.

I also used 5mm LEDs in my small yard lights, but I am not familiar with the Evans Designs bulbs, will have to look into those. Since you have already used those, I am guessing the Evans Designs lights won't work in the light towers? The tower bulbs looked very similar to the yard light bulbs from looking at the catalog, but there must be some differences? 

I don't have any tower lights so I don't have anything to look at or try something out on. I am un-sure how hard it would be to actually convert those or exactly what to do? Sounds like it may be more difficult, like what Dale H has done with his light towers, than what we have done with our yard lights.

I want to get some light towers in the future and was considering the new LED versions from Lionel. However, it will be a while for me though, I just depleted my train budget last week on some of the new Lionel command control operating accessories in the new catalogs.

If you are referring to modern era versions of the 195 light towers, they came with at least two different style bulbs. Older versions used a #12 bulb, which is a 6 volt bulb with two pins for a base. The glass is flattened where the pins exit.
The later version used bulbs with wire leads that are mounted in a plastic base that slides into the socket.

Look in the "HOW TO" thread. A fellow Poster put up a nicely illustrated piece on using LED bulbs on this light tower.

let me just delete my ramblings. Thanks to CW for pointing out it's been done.

195 new style led conversion.

195 old style

RTR 12, For the yard lights i bought the 5mm led's from evans designs,i took out the old bulbs,then i put the new bulb into the holder,i then had to bend the legs of the led's up to the rim on the side of the holder,because the legs were to long i had to cut them to the right length,then i pushed them into the socket,next i had to figure out which of the 2 wires comming out the bottom of the yard light was positive,i did this by taking a coin shaped battery which i got from evans designs & i put one wire on the positive side & the other wire on the negitive side,if the led lit up then i knew which wire was positive,if it didn't lite up i just reversed the wires,when i found the positive wire i marked it with a piece of tape,next i took the harness i got from evans designs & connected the positive wire from the yard light to the positive wire of the harness,which they had already had marked,& the the negative wire from the yard light to the negative wire of the harness.  It looks like to convert my tower to led's is going to be more difficult then i thought because of my limited knowledge .    

I did the same thing on my yard lights, only I didn't use the Evans Design LEDs and I had to make a low volt DC power supply for them.

See Moonman's links above, the new style link was just like my yard lights, only I had the added power supply. Looks like Bobby Ogauge's solution would work for you on the light towers, if not the new style, the old style one. Looks like he has both covered with diagrams included.

RTR 12 ,Yes i saw Moonmans response ,most of that stuff went over my head,i don't understand a lot of this stuff,so i think it is best that i just leave things as they are for now until such time as i can understand what is going on,i don't want to ruin my tower by trying to do something i don't understand,but i want to thank everyone for there responses.