Eckon Yard Lamps

[michaelp]

Hi all,

I want to fit some Eckon yard lamps on my layout and have them all operated by one on/off switch but I have no idea how to wire them up, I have heard of wiring multiple items in series and parallel but don't know where to start, also if the lamps come with resistors how do they get wired in?

 

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

 

Michael

[Brian]

Hi all,

I want to fit some Eckon yard lamps on my layout and have them all operated by one on/off switch but I have no idea how to wire them up, I have heard of wiring multiple items in series and parallel but don't know where to start, also if the lamps come with resistors how do they get wired in?

 

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

 

Michael

Hi

Eckon Yard Lamps (EL-1, EL-2 & EL3) are connected across a pair of wires fed with 12 volts dc (ideal) or 16 volts ac.

They are filament lamps and no series resistor is used.

 

Wire one terminal of power supply to one side of On/Off switch. Other side of On/Off switch out to all of the lamps where one wire of the two from each lamp is tapped into this through wire as it passes by.

 

From the other terminal of the supply run another wire directly out to the layout and again tap onto this at every lamp with the second wire from each lamp.

 

You can use soldered and taped joints or small 2 way terminal blocks to make these connections.

 

It doesn't matter which way around the lamp wires are connected onto the two through feed wires, as filament lamps are not polarity concious.

 

As shown on my web site in this section under the 'Parallel' wiring diagram.....Lamp wiring

 

If you wish to reduce their brightness and prolong the lamps life you can always consider one of two options....

1) Power the lamps from a supply rated at 9 volts or one that's variable and set the power level (voltage output) to suit the lamps brightness.

or

2) Connecting two lamps together in series and then connect the paired two across the supply wires. So wiring of two lamps is..... Feed wire to lamp 1 wire 1. Lamp 1 wire 2 joins directly to Lamp 2 wire 1. Lamp 2 wire 2 connects to the other feed wire. The only down side of this is that if one of the two lamps ever fails both will go out until the failed lamp is replaced.

 

Here's the basic Parallel wiring diagram..