What color LED strip for passenger car lighting?

Warm white.  You need to use GRJ's little LED lighting thing (get it at Hennings).  After installing them, before you button it up check the light level, it may be too bright.  I paint over some of the LEDs with black paint to reduce the light.

Actually, if the lighting is too bright, you just adjust the little intensity pot to the desired brightness, no need to paint anything!

I thought there was a way to do that on the device, but I'm too much of a bull in the china shop to figure that out.  I'll use this on future projects for sure.  Thanks.

FWIW, If you're converting heavyweights, you may want to go with amber or, paint the warm white with Tamiya X26 transparent orange.

@TedW posted:

FWIW, If you're converting heavyweights, you may want to go with amber or, paint the warm white with Tamiya X26 transparent orange.

I was lazy, I just used yellow LED strips for my heavyweight car.

Here's a car with yellow lighting strips.

Here's a car with warm white lighting strips

I know you're not that lazy, John.  Literally a minute "door to door" painting 4 or 5, 18" strips isn't that hard!  Just a swipe with the brush on each one, done.  Now, those Menards buildings, they may take a little more time. 😏

It's all personal preference, but I strongly prefer the warm white in the above photo.  Can they be turned down a notch, sure.  I'll have to check how turning down the intensity compares to masking out some of the LEDs.  As @TedW said, painting some lights on a strip isn't that time consuming.  I just use a Sharpie.

Well, you can turn down the intensity until you can barely tell if there's any light in the car, and since the light is coming evenly from all the lamps, it certainly should be the better method.  I can't imagine that five seconds with a tiny driver is harder than blacking out LED's with a sharpie.

Does turning down the intensity modify the perceived light color?  I just did a warm white LED strip (about 12 inches) on my 6517 caboose, and it was too bright.  I blacked out about 1 out of every 3 lights, and the effect was just as I wanted, clear light but not a sunburst.

I haven't seen any issue with the color changing, the actual LED die determines the emitted color.  Obviously, a lower intensity inside the car may be perceived as a color change, but that would happen with any intensity change.

LED's are not like incandescent bulbs that will change color temperature with current.

Since all of you in this discussion are OGR Digital Subscribers, you can watch THIS VIDEO which shows a simple technique for warming up a string of "too blue" LEDs.

Rich, I try to buy them the right color to save time.

@Ward H posted:

I'm planning to add LED strips to my RK passenger cars and was wondering what's everyone's preference for LED color?

I buy John Will’s kits from Hennings.  They look great as shown in the video.

The LED's in the kits are right around 3K color temperature.  They might vary a bit as I can't always get the exact same product when it's time to order LED's.

On a similar subject, does anyone know the color and temperature of the LEDs in the current releases of Lionel’s scale heavyweights?  I would like to convert (using John’s modules) my older PolEx passenger cars to match the LED add-on cars.

@Rider Sandman posted:

On a similar subject, does anyone know the color and temperature of the LEDs in the current releases of Lionel’s scale heavyweights?  I would like to convert (using John’s modules) my older PolEx passenger cars to match the LED add-on cars.

Do you cars have silhouettes or interiors?

@RixTrack posted:

Do you cars have silhouettes or interiors?

I believe some of the early traditional cars had silhouettes, but all of the scale cars have interiors. They are the black roof cars from the first release of the scale PolEx. They also have the very dark green windows (also on the list to replace since they make the interiors completely unviewable).

I replaced the green windows on a bunch of my Lionel cars with clear windows.  I had a half-and-half mix, so I went with what I liked better.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

I replaced the green windows on a bunch of my Lionel cars with clear windows.  I had a half-and-half mix, so I went with what I liked better.

Did you buy windows from Lionel parts?

@Rider Sandman posted:

Did you buy windows from Lionel parts?

Nope, I just bought plastic and cut them to size.  The cars I was dealing with had strips secured with double-sided tape, I just took all of that out and replaced it.  These were also a run of cars from the early 2000's that had the fogged windows, so I ended up replacing all 11 car's windows, and I converted them to LED while I was in there.