TOO brite headlight

Interesting approach.  

Frosted window panel might be a brighter option.  And of course adding a resistor to the l.e.d. could dim what's there too, but neither would warm like the off- yellow of masking tape.

If you go all the way to taking the shell off you can replace the LED with a warm white one and a resistor to make it dimmer. Masking tape degrades over time and the adhesive gets dry and leaves a hard residue and the paper falls off.

Im not electronically inclined so when that day if ever comes more tape . im thinking  simple fix

Model loco headlights are kind of a flaky subject, anyway. Modern locos - the real ones - have bright, white lights, so the color of the LED's above is wrong anyway, as those F's and EP-5's come from the same era, so far as lighting technology goes, as steam locomotives. Making them too bright just makes it worse.

Until the late 1940's, if it was daylight, locomotives did not have their headlights on at all. (Dark, gray, rainy/snowy days excepted, generally.) So, very few steamers ran around with their headlights on - yet we expect that 1918 USRA Mike to be all lit up (don't get me started on class/marker Xmas tree lighting) on a sunny day. Lionel, AF, Marx, Ives and the rest are to blame. Most of the time, unless you have the room lights off, those steamers should have dark noses.

Diesel headlights were turned on during the day because it turned out that a speeding diesel was a lot harder to spot heading toward the crossing or a meet with another train than a steamer, most of the time. But, a modern, well-fired steamer made very little smoke at speed, sometimes less than the diesels of the day. I believe that the NYC Niagaras were among the first steamers to run with the headlight on in daylight. (I may be completely wrong about that.) 

FWIW, I like bright headlights.  The look of the light actually visible on the rails looks way more realistic to me. 

On the topic of number boards, I agree they shouldn't be like headlights, and AAMOF, I have dimmed many of them down so the number boards are illuminated, but not glowing like they're white hot.   The same with class lights and marker lights, I like them to be lower in intensity that the headlight for obvious reasons.

On the topic of color temperature, I use LED colors of yellow, amber, warm white, and on to bright white, depending on the era of the locomotive in question.