Beacons. I Need Beacons.

[Packer]

Holy smokes look at this:
http://led-switch.com/2mm%20LED.htm#2mm flashing mark

A 2mm LED, more than long enough to stick through a cab roof, allow some trimming rounding and polishing, a nice wide base for gluing, AND A FLASHING CIRCUIT!!! Albeit it's probably a coarse strobe flash, not a nice pretty glowing rotary flash, but still. I think this may be the winner!

I might have found an LED replacement for the mini-bulbs in my HO athearn units. Thanks!

[robert3985]

FOUND IT!!! http://www.shapeways.com/model/270591/n_scale_beacon_lights_20_pack.html?gid=ug
 

You did see that these are not for sale, right?

[peteski]

Holy smokes look at this:
http://led-switch.com/2mm%20LED.htm#2mm flashing mark

A 2mm LED, more than long enough to stick through a cab roof, allow some trimming rounding and polishing, a nice wide base for gluing, AND A FLASHING CIRCUIT!!! Albeit it's probably a coarse strobe flash, not a nice pretty glowing rotary flash, but still. I think this may be the winner!

The large-bottom through-hole mount LEDs are so 1980s!     Especially in small N scale models. Very bright yet tiny SMD LEDs are now widely used by hobbyists and manufacturers in N scale.

But even that aside, the problem with these is that the light-emitting chip is buried deep inside the large base.  The small tip (especially when viewed from the side) emits a very small fraction of the light emitted by the LED chip.  Not very bright.  I suppose it might be acceptable to some modelers but I felt like I should give a warning.  I should not go and hide in my brightly-lit surface-mount LED corner. 

[Ike the BN Freak]

https://secure.bluehost.com/~sunrisen/sren.htm

Might be able to get direct from Sunrise, the last update to the site looks to be July 2012.

[bc6]

Check out the link, he also sells amber beacons.


https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=27091.msg277062#msg277062

[Wutter]

Detail Associates makes a package of "flashers" that were still available the last time I checked. It was #8222 and it comes in a pack of 3 different styles.

Kind of a blurry picture but the Stratolite on the near side of the tree looks pretty close to it.

[Ian MacMillan]

"bacons I need bacons"

I thought this was another Ed themed thread.
funny what one reads sometimes

I had read it as that way as well. 

[DKS]

I had read it as that way as well. 

+1

[robert3985]

Detail Associates makes a package of "flashers" that were still available the last time I checked. It was #8222 and it comes in a pack of 3 different styles.

Kind of a blurry picture but the Stratolite on the near side of the tree looks pretty close to it.

I have several of these and the "Stratolite on the near side of the tree" is IT.

Glue a small, bright non-80's SMD LED on the bottom facing UP (you're correct Peteski, it WAS in the 80's when I started turning LED's down to look like beacons) drill a small hole in the cab roof (smaller than the OD of the beacon housing) to run the wires through, counter-sink a second hole that is the same dia, (or an RCH larger) than the beacon housing using the wire-clearance hole as a guide, just a tadge deeper than the thickness of the SMD LED, paint the "metal" part of the housing silver, position and glue in place, hook it up to your decoder and VOILA!...yer ready to rock and roll...

PS...some railroads used a rectangular or square plate under their beacons.  Ya might want to check your prototype to see if that's the case for your road.

[peteski]

... (you're correct Peteski, it WAS in the 80's when I started turning LED's down to look like beacons) ...

Yeah, me too (until much smaller and much brighter SMD LEDs became readily available).

[LN2800]

While we're on the subject, any advice on the best starting point for the SCL cab-mounted strobe lights such as the ones seen here:   http://gelwood.railfan.net/scl/scl4798ads.jpg     

They don't have to be operable.

[robert3985]

The starting point is finding a high level photo to show how they're mounted, getting measurements, then doing a plan drawing.

If it were me doing those, since they obviously don't have a clear beacon lens, but a translucent white lens, I'd then draw them up in Sketchup, using my plan drawing as a reference, email the file to Shapeways, wait a couple of weeks until they're delivered, soak them over night in Bestine, paint the bases and apply a little gloss to the beacon lens, glue 'em on and be done with it.  Applying a little gloss to the lenses would give them just the right look over FUD (Frosted Ultra Detail) acrylic which is slightly translucent.

Drawing the 3D model would take me less time than going down to my local plastic shop, finding the right plastic, bringing it home, doing a plan drawing, chucking it in my lathe, machining and filing it.

And, I'd probably have several left over for future projects!

[LN2800]

Thanks for the tips.  At any rate I will probably have to estimate dimensions from photos, since these were removed almost entirely, if not entirely, by 1985. I'm not aware of any locomotive with these intact that I could pull field measurements from.   

[robert3985]

Thanks for the tips.  At any rate I will probably have to estimate dimensions from photos, since these were removed almost entirely, if not entirely, by 1985. I'm not aware of any locomotive with these intact that I could pull field measurements from.

It's pretty easy and common practice to take the measurements from known object in a photo and extrapolate the dimensions of the piece you are modeling from those dimensions, such as the diameter of a headlight's lens, or the height of a window, which dimensions are usually published somewhere.

I'll use a photo of something that is as flat-on in at least one direction as possible, which for a loco or car is usually in the vertical direction, take a measurement of that dimension on the photo (using a dial caliper), then determine the scale of the drawing and write it somewhere in the border of the photo, such as ".257 = 1inch".  It's pretty easy at that point to just take measurements of the other dimensions and turn them into actual measurements.  Then, when I've got the actual measurements, I'll convert them to whatever scale I'm going to build my model in.

Sometimes, if the angle of view in the horizontal is a lot greater than the flat-on view in the vertical, I'll do the same process for dimensions in the horizontal, which will always mean that less distance equals more inches in the horizontal view.  When you extrapolate dimensions in both views, the scale will be different for vertical dimensions than for horizontal dimensions.

Easy.