Lionel Flood Light Tower

I don't think I would do that.  LED's in parallel will frequently burn at different intensities or in extreme cases, one or more will not illuminate at all.

Since you have at least 12 volts AC available, here's what I'd do.  Let's assume you're going to run them at 12 volts AC.

Connect pairs of two LED's in parallel with their plus and minus leads reversed, i.e. the plus of one to the minus of the other, etc.

Connect to of the pairs in series and and connect a 300 ohm resistor in series with these pairs of LED's and to the 12 VAC power.  Do the same thing with the outer four LED's for the second row.

If you want to run on higher voltage, you'll have to adjust the resistor value to suit the higher voltage.

Hi John,

I was waiting for you to chime in, and I appreciate your advice. Converting the Lionel 195 is not so easy because of the unusual circuit in the light assembly, and the use of metal rods to conduct power up from the base.

Using your advice to hookup the LEDs and loosing the rods, it looks like I will be rewiring everything in the tower. More to follow. I will be posting some sketches here as this project evolves.

Thanks again for your teaching.

I don't happen to have that light tower, so I can't offer any mechanical advice, just looking at how I'd deal with the LED's electrically with an AC supply.

One other option, if you have room, is to wire them in parallel, but have a small equalizing resistor of 10-22 ohms in series with each LED to solve the issue of uneven lighting.  You could still wire them opposed in opposite directions to avoid having to use a bridge to power them.

Another thing to consider is the 10mm wide angle LED's, I got some off eBay that are flat faced and have a wide angle.  They'd be about the perfect size for the spotlight bulb replacements.  Here's what they look like.

This thread on converting a tower to LEDs might have some tidbits...

John,

Because of the limited room in the Lionel 195 Floodlight Tower, I will take your first suggestion and go with this circuit.

 The Lionel 195 tower head is an unusual design in that it uses coil springs for conductors. The OEM bulbs have a pin base, so contact with the spring coils is haphazard at best, and the bulbs burnout quickly where the pin connections have high resistance. The cost of the pin-base bulbs is extraordinary at $12 for two! The 195 Floodlight Tower is not one of Lionel's brighter designs.

Lionel must have realized their 195 Tower design was poor as they redesigned the head to use Christmas light type bulb sockets that are ideally suited to hold 3mm LEDs, or to use Christmas light LEDs.

 I am working on the LED installations in both types of the 195 Towers, and I will post sketches and pictures when I am done just as I did for the K-Line Searchlight Tower. Thanks for your help to make this project work. By the way, I also bought some of those flat face LEDs on eBay. My first try will be with 5mm bright white LEDs.

I bought the 10mm ones for this reason.  Turns out my light tower is the one with the Christmas tree bulbs.

John,

I just did a test on the tower and the 8mm flat top LEDs are an ideal fit in the early tower. Actually I could fit 10mm LEDs in the early tower, but the 10mm LEDs are a bit too pricey.

I'll be putting them into my tower at some point, then I can sell those expensive bulbs and recapture the investment.

          Bob,

Your diagrams are just beautiful! Is there any way you could teach some of us the basics of how to do this.

          Bob K.~

          John,

   Can you tell me where you got those 10 mm wide angle leds?

          Thanks Bob K.~

I got them on eBay, but I can't seem to find the receipt in my mail messages right now.  If I find it, I'll post it.

quote:

The Lionel 195 tower head is an unusual design in that it uses coil springs for conductors. The OEM bulbs have a pin base, so contact with the spring coils is haphazard at best, and the bulbs burnout quickly where the pin connections have high resistance. The cost of the pin-base bulbs is extraordinary at $12 for two! The 195 Floodlight Tower is not one of Lionel's brighter designs.

When Lionel developed the 195 light tower, the #12 bulbs it used were fairly new. I have the GE catalog in which they were introduced. GE claimed infinite life on the #12 bulbs.
Unfortunately, the bulbs didn't catch on. Those who have worked with those bulbs would probably agree that they were rather ill-conceived, being that the glass around the pins breaks easy, ruining the bulb. I think they were superceeded by wedge based bulbs, such as the #161. In my experience, the wedge based bulbs are much more sturdy.

As the quote above mentions, during the modern era, the 195 style lamp post was updated to use a different bulb.
However, even though the 2-pin bulbs had been considered obsolete for at least 30 years (probably longer but I only have so many GE bulb catalogs), the 2002 instruction manual for the Executive Inspection car indicates that modern era Lionel was still using the #19 (12 volt, 2-pin) bulb.

Rather than buying #12 or #19 bulbs on Ebay at around $6.00 each, I suggest checking with Town and Country Hobby.

He sells 10 packs of #12 for $25 and 10 packs of #19 for $25.

Same price for clear, red, green, or frosted.

Other parts dealers may have similar pricing.

Rather than buying any of the bulbs, convert them to LED's.

Yes, some folks will want to convert to LED's. When I run out of bulbs, I'll consider switching to LED's in places where the bulb doesn't show. But some folks do prefer bulbs.

Regardless, the point I was really trying to make is that buying bulbs (and other parts) on Ebay is often more costly than buying them from our community of parts dealers.

Point taken, and agreed.   I only buy stuff on eBay if I know it's a good price.  It so happens that many of the LED deals are very good prices, the only reason I look there after pricing at my standard purchasing haunts.

The LEDs for this project cost $2, the resistors $0.5, maybe $1 for wire and about $0.1 for shrink sleeve. So for $3.60 with materials I bought on eBay, I can convert one Lionel 195 tower to 8 white LEDs that will last for thousands of hours at 12 to 14 volts, and draw less than 200ma of current.

My accessory transformer will no longer beg for mercy pushing a few amps through two Lionel 195 Floodlight Towers and a K-Line 133 Searchlight Tower I already converted.

          John,

  I ordered some of the 8 mm flat head leds so you can stop searching for your receipt. Thanks again for making me aware on how many leds are availialbe on line.

          Bob K.~

Do you need a bridge rectifier?

Great, because I don't know what happened to that order copy.

No.  Connect your accessory AC directly to the two clips in the top of the first March 4 drawing. 

Perhaps more information than you need, but if you insert a bridge before the clips (thereby converting AC-to-DC), only half the LEDs would light. The proposed configuration depends on the alternating polarity of the AC signal where half the LEDs light on one polarity, and the other half on the other polarity.  This on-off “blinking” happens so quickly (60 times per second) that it appears steady-on to the eye.

Stan thanks.  I have 2 towers I think I will try this on.

The point of using the LED's back-to-back was to eliminate the need for the bridge, it's just an extra part.

I can see a flicker on cheap led christmas light strings that don't have a full wave rectifier. It is really annoying.

I'm wondering if using a circuit like the one for this topic would have a similar effect. In that is the case, I think it might be prudent for those folks who notice the flicker to use circuits that incorporate a rectifier.

Better to spend the money for an extra part than get a headache whenever you look at the lights.

If the flicker really bothers you, add a large value capacitor to that bridge rectifier.

Thanks for the info on the capacitor. I haven't tried to build my own led circuit yet, but I do plan to in the future and I read the led related topics. I'll err on the conservative side to avoid flickering lights.