Where to get 18v grain of rice bulbs?

If you can't find reasonably priced 18V GOR bulbs, a 5-cent 1N400x diode in-line cuts 18V track power in half allowing you to use a 12V GOR bulb which I'd think easier to find hence less expensive. 

Cutting power in half makes the effective voltage close to 12V.

Are there similarly sized LED bulbs that can be used as a direct replacement? I found the screw based LED bulbs, but have some cars that are lit by GOR bulbs. Actually, mine might be GOW. I will need to look. 

Do the ones in the caboose connect to a circuit board? Mine do.

Give us a picture of the bulb. 

romiller49 posted:

Give us a picture of the bulb. 

I can't get the other one out Rod...

Micro Mark has them a package of  40 ,for $ 39.95 .    Sorry ,they are 12 volts you are looking for 18v ,unless you know how to put resisters in then you may be able to use them,but Evans Designs has led bulbs with everything already hooked up & they are good for 18 volts ,they also have chip leds that are really small & they come in different colors i just used them on my panel meter project  ,hope this helps .

If it’s the kind of bulb the has a push in base as the ones used on miniature Christmas lights Lionel makes an 18 volt bulb that will work. Remove the old bulb from it’s base and replace it with the 18 volt Lionel bulb. If this is what you have I can send you the part number.

You might want to check the output voltage. I believe K line marker bulbs are 1.5 volts.

Check this place out. About a third of the way down the page they have the "Christmas" style bases. It's the cheapest place I've found for any bulb. They have a lot of train related bulbs.  http://www.autolumination.com/trainbulbs.htm

Hope this helps,

Jeff

Does the caboose have a large incandescent bulb for the interior? If so you can wire an array of four diodes in series with that bulb and use a 1.5 volt GOW across the diodes. Common trick used in pre DCC days with HO engines.

I have done that on mine with Tomar markers.

Pete

Check out Circuitron Mitey Lights, maximum voltage for their bulbs is 16v, possibly operate the 16 volt bulb in series with a resistor capable of dissipating 2 volts or more. 

I have one you can have, email is in my profile.  Joe

Chuck Sartor posted:

You might want to check the output voltage. I believe K line marker bulbs are 1.5 volts.

That was a really great idea Chuck!  I should have done that to begin with!  Ok, so I fired up the Z4k and measured the voltage at the two leads... 

@ 18v... the missing bulb leads read 16.6v, and the incandescent light in the middle looked like the sun!  LOL

@ 17v the missing bulb leads read 15.4v

Does this help?

Rigatoni Express Railroad posted:

I have one you can have, email is in my profile.  Joe

Thanks Joe!  I'll pop you an email.

Postwarman posted:

Check this place out. About a third of the way down the page they have the "Christmas" style bases. It's the cheapest place I've found for any bulb. They have a lot of train related bulbs.  http://www.autolumination.com/trainbulbs.htm

Hope this helps,

Jeff

Thanks for the link Jeff!  This bulb is much smaller than those, but I'm bookmarking that site for the future.  Lots of great stuff there!

Miniatronics has grain of rice bulbs 1.2 mm (.048") in diameter if you can use the 1.5 volt bulb. Higher voltages are 2.4 mm in diameter.

https://www.miniatronics.com/M...mp;Category_Code=1_1

Pete

Rigatoni Express Railroad posted:

I have one you can have, email is in my profile.  Joe

So is this "the" replacement bulb for the K-line marker?  What is the part #, voltage, etc.  Would be good to know for the record. 

His other marker bulb will go out at some point and we'd be back to square 1.

Volphin posted:

Chuck Sartor posted:

You might want to check the output voltage. I believe K line marker bulbs are 1.5 volts.

That was a really great idea Chuck!  I should have done that to begin with!  Ok, so I fired up the Z4k and measured the voltage at the two leads... 

@ 18v... the missing bulb leads read 16.6v, and the incandescent light in the middle looked like the sun!  LOL

@ 17v the missing bulb leads read 15.4v

Does this help?

Doesn't this suggest the marker bulb is NOT 1.5V?

Separately, if your light in the middle looks like the sun (too bright at command track voltage) perhaps you should consider re-working the lighting in the caboose.  Possible candidate for an LED conversion.

Here's the caboose - the number is on the side of it

STAN2004 has it - it's time to convert this to LED lighting. I don't believe it was intended for the command voltage.

With gunrunnerjohn's led lighting regulator, some 2mm led and some of the strip led's or a 5mm diffused you could relight this for command operation at 18volts and forget about it.

here is 16V  https://www.ebay.com/itm/Grain...4:g:6cQAAOxyjzNRFlLe

Chuck Sartor is right it's 1.5volts. If you use higher voltage bulb you will melt the lantern & car body. K-line has diodes on the pcb on roof.

Actually they are 3 volts. Lionel has them in stock. 620-1276-301. I also have a couple of them in stock too. You're welcome.

Actually a little revision. The output for the marker bulbs is 1.20 volts, so you can use a 1.5 GOR bulb, but they have a short lifespan. The bulbs I recommend work fine, markers light up just fine. Replace in pairs for equal brilliance. 

subway vic posted:

Chuck Sartor is right it's 1.5volts. If you use higher voltage bulb you will melt the lantern & car body. K-line has diodes on the pcb on roof.

Actually, too low a voltage bulb is bad, a higher voltage bulb will run cooler on low temperatures.

Professor Chaos posted the following diagram for K-Line's so-called Streamlighting method which uses the diode method being discussed.  I'm not convinced this is what the OP has in his particular caboose if he's measuring more than 15V across the terminals going to the marker bulbs in question.

Here is Town & Country Hobbies site they have all kinds of bulbs.  Good Luck.

http://stores.towncountryhobbi...rain-of-wheat-bulbs/

Postwarman posted:

Check this place out. About a third of the way down the page they have the "Christmas" style bases. It's the cheapest place I've found for any bulb. They have a lot of train related bulbs.  http://www.autolumination.com/trainbulbs.htm

Hope this helps,

Jeff

Jeff,

This site shows LED screw and bayonet base bulbs that look like they can simply be used to replace old Lionel incandescent bulbs in switches, cars, buildings, etc. Do you know if  that is true? No resistors, rectifiers needed?

Bob

Bob,

 I have seen them also, but haven't bought any yet. I assume that everything is contained in the LED bulb itself. I was considering an LED one for the power light on my ZW to reduce the heat. I purchased 24V bulbs from them for all of my switches, they are much cooler and haven't melted any more lantern covers since. 8-)

Sorry, I don't know anymore about them than that. I have called them before , and they seem to be easy people to deal with, I'm sure they would hopefully answer any questions, but i'm pretty sure the LED bulbs are self contained. Just replace your old ones.  The only thing would probably bother me is that they wouldn't have the same visual effect as the old postwar lights ( if that matters to you). Hope this helps.  They ship fairly fast also.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. It does help. I am thinking I might give them a try. I have bookmarked the link.

Bob

I bought a few of the LED substitute bulbs at York and was disappointed they were cool white. I may try painting them yellow to see if they look better. I'm not sure if soft white is available.

Agree. Soft or warm white would look more like incandescent. For most of my layout, cool white would not look right.

I note that they offer both 6K and 3K clear lights. 6K (6,000 Kelvin) is in the 'daylight' range and is very blue. Cool white is 3.1 to 4.5 K. Warm white is 2K to 3K and has a yellow hue. I bet you picked up the 6K option.

Bob

rtraincollector posted:

here is 16V  https://www.ebay.com/itm/Grain...4:g:6cQAAOxyjzNRFlLe

 

Thanks for the link Bill, but 3mm is too large.  I need 1.8-2mm diameter.

George S posted:

Are there similarly sized LED bulbs that can be used as a direct replacement? I found the screw based LED bulbs, but have some cars that are lit by GOR bulbs. Actually, mine might be GOW. I will need to look. 

Do the ones in the caboose connect to a circuit board? Mine do.

George, there is no PCB.  Sorry for the late response.

I predict diodes in your future!  It might be light-emitting or "just" voltage-dropping.  

That said, if you "do" eBay, you can get 1N4003 diodes (commonly suggested on OGR for a wide variety of applications) for a mere penny each (free shipping from Asia). 

For example, if a 1.5V GOR bulb is what you end up with you could duplicate the Streamlighting circuit using 4 cents worth of diodes.

Hmm, so what to do with the other 96 diodes you have leftover!?  As suggested earlier you can cut AC track power in half (cuts track voltage by about 1/3rd) using a single diode.  Or, using pairs of diodes (2 cents), you can drop track voltage by about 3/4V per pair.  Lowering voltage applied to a 14V, 16V or 18V bulb by just 1 Volt will more than double bulb life.

Well it looks like I found some 16v ones.  I'll keep you guys posted once they arrive.  

The bulbs in these K-Line bay windows are (so far as I know) outfitted to run in command environments. I have run them without problem, although not for extended periods. I opened one up a year ago or so to do something to the interior and inadvertently wired a bulb to track power wires and it instantly popped.

I haven't gotten around to do anything further with the caboose, but here are some photos of the interior, the bulbs and the wiring. Maybe this will help answer some questions. The two bulbs are connected via the two spring connectors to the streamlighting board, and there are 4 diodes (I assume) located there. I don't know if all four are wired to the marker lights. 

Yes, the small marker bulbs shown are 1.5 - 3 volt bulbs. The early K-line cabooses without the conv./comd. switch are meant for conventional layouts where the track voltage is around 14 volts, so the smoke resistor doesn't overheat. 

How did the project go?

Reviving this old thread after having the same luck not finding any 18v replacement bulbs for my MTH subway cars like the original poster with his Kline caboose. It looked like the only option was to either rewire for LEDs or resistors, something I really don’t want to do.  However, I was fortunate to find out that these are available on MTH’s parts website (part #CI0000009).  They even have the plastic base for easy insertion into the MTH light panel, which can be discarded if not needed.  Ironically, the parts diagram for subways on the mth parts website incorrectly shows an out of stock 8 volt bulb as the only option for subway cars. These 18v bulbs work great and are not as hot as the other ones in my subway cars (I think the originals must be 16 or 14 volts).