Replacing the lighting on an Atlas Shay?

[Hedron]

I have an early model Atlas Shay, purchased used. One headlight was out. It has LEDs on leads with axial resistors, and the leads are brittle (which per spookshow and Youtube is par for the course.) The offending light was broken on arrival. And, naturally, in the course of troubleshooting, the lead on the other light broke. I tried resoldering, but there's just not much to work with and they quickly snapped again while replacing the shell. While I have this thing apart, what's a reasonable path to replace them with something more robust? I'm new to LEDs, so explain like I'm an idiot.

[u18b]

@peteski  posted on this a while back.  He mounted better LEDs.  Much brighter.

[peteski]

Yes, when I installed a decoder several years ago, I also replaced the original LEDs with Surface-mount (SMD) LEDs, resistors, and fiber optics.  I etched my own PC boards to hold the LED and resistor.



The full write-up is in https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=37764

[Hedron]

That's a great install, thanks for the link. I don't have the equipment to etch. I suppose this from ngineering is too big?

[peteski]

Yes, those boards seem a bit large to be used on the Shay.  You don't have to etch the PC boards.  You can get a piece of thin copper clad PC board, then using a Dremel with a small engraving bit (or a dental burr), you can cut the copper cladding, creating isolated pads to which you can solder components.

The surplus electronics dealer I usually get them from doesn't have any thin copper clad PC boards, but it looks like there is one available at https://www.circuitspecialists.com/586.html .  I have dealt with that company in the past, but that was long time ago. I have plenty of thin copper clad PC board material.  I could just mail you a piece for your project.

[Hedron]

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