stewartingram Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Is it just me, or is there an obsession with having toy-like working lights on RTR green diesels nowadays? In recent months I have purchased the following models, and have been very dissappointed with the ready fitted lighting. !st job has been to strip them down, itself not an easy task nowadays with the complexity of models, and remove the lighting. In the green period, tail lights were not used as oil lamps (barely visible even at night) were used Headcode boxes were certainly not visible in daylight, and hardly visible at night either. Lights in the discs were not illuminated in daylight, and were dim bulbs, not super bright leds, when lit. The light lenses on dmu's were opaque white glass, again very dim; rearlights were not lit as red until well into the blue era, oil lamps again being used. I can accept the lighting is probably fine in the later period, probably from around the time of HST's & 56's, which were the 1st I believe to come with "proper" lights, leading to the wholesale introduction of add-on lights on other classes. Bachmann 105 Cravens (2 off) Bachmann Derby Lightweight Bachmann 03 (admittedly only cablights, but look as if they are yellow leds....not incandecent bulbs) Heljan 15 Helan railbus Heljan 23 etc etc - not counting quite a few others in recent years! Comments welcome? Stewart Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stuartp Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 No, it's not just you. If you can see them in daylight without looking right down the lens, they're too bright. Once they did start to use built in lights on conventional DMUs they were something like 60W bulbs - hopeless with the sun shining on them and the cause of plenty of delays while guards confirmed they were actually lit. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivercider Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 I can remember waiting to catch the 21.40 Bristol - Plymouth from Yatton on numerous occasions in 1976/77, which was hauled by pretty much anything Bath Road had available, (25/31/45/46/47/50/52). Approaching trains can be seen for quite some distance at Yatton, but at night the train seemed to be not far off the platform end before the headcode lights appeared out of the gloom. cheers edit - this was obviously 'blue' period, but the lights were still pretty feeble at that time Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edwin_m Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Just to clear up one point, class 87 were the first production build to carry "proper" lighting, beating class 56 and production HSTs by a couple of years. Class 313 may also have squeaked in first. I do agree though that lighting was pretty feeble on earlier classes and remained so until most survivors were fitted with high intensity headlights. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jim s-w Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Red tail lights on anything green (emus excepted) didn't actually happen and twin tail lights on anything earlier than the mid 80s didn't happen either. Cheers Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merfyn Jones Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Just slightly off the topic. The same applies to semaphore signals where you can hardly see the oil lights during daylight, and only from drivers eye level at night. Do 'we' make too much fuss over having lighting ?. Well I think so. Merf. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BernardTPM Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Here here! It's a waste of money on period models, full stop. I found it was quite easy to disable them on my new Farish 37 simply by folding a small piece of paper that fits between the light contacts between the chassis and body. That way if I want to sell it I can easily reinstate the 'toy' features. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted March 2, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 2, 2012 Red tail lights on anything green (emus excepted) didn't actually happen and twin tail lights on anything earlier than the mid 80s didn't happen either. Even on Southern EMUs it wasn't until 1963 (I think) that oil tail-lamps were permitted to be abandoned in favour of twin-red roller blinds - and then only on units with batteries. So e.g. the 4-SUBs, some of which were retro-fitted with roller blinds, never ran without an oil tail-lamp. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Tomlinson Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I couldn't agree with you more, Stewart. In a similar vein, I don't understand why locos such as Bachmann's Deltic now come with fully illuminated cabs - you wouldn't after all drive down the motorway at night with your interior lights on! Well said! John. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CWJ Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Along with the comments already made, I would add that many good models are spoiled by bright, blue-white headlights and equally incorrect yellow marker lights. LEDs approximating the colour of tungsten bulbs have been around for ages now so there is no excuse for getting it wrong. It can be ironic when reviewers criticise the shade of, say, BR green paint (which would of course vary massively depending on age, weathering, lighting, etc.) but quite happily turn a blind eye to the glaring headlights (which would, until the late-1990s at least, have always been tunsten-lamp-colour, not LED-coloured). Many modellers, not content with the lighting on their locomotives, seem to take this a step further by building 'TMD' layouts festooned with blue-white LED floodlights. With a few notable exceptions these layouts all look pretty much the same to me, and none of them look like a real depot. This could be avoided by basing the layout on real practice and photographic evidence rather than basing it on everyone else's TMD layout. While I'm on a roll, and I know it's been said before, tail lights can be equally controversial. All trains should have one on the rear end, and no trains should have one in the middle. Full stop. A locomotive with tail lights which can't be switched off is as much use as a loco with no coupling. Cheers, Will Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
'CHARD Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 A locomotive with tail lights which can't be switched off is as much use as a loco with no coupling. Errrr... Except in its capacity for train hauling, that is. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edwin_m Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I think CWJ's point is that if the tail light can't be switched off it's not allowed to haul a train. Not a problem for TMD layouts but annoying for those of us who want our model locos to do something useful. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 ...!st job has been to strip them down, itself not an easy task nowadays with the complexity of models, and remove the lighting... With tongue firmly in cheek, can I suggest that herein lies one of the great benefits of DCC? Even if we cannot always dim these fairy lights, we can usually just turn them off Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewartingram Posted March 2, 2012 Author Share Posted March 2, 2012 With tongue firmly in cheek, can I suggest that herein lies one of the great benefits of DCC? Even if we cannot always dim these fairy lights, we can usually just turn them off Nick Not really a solution for me. Cost - with about 140 items of motive power I can't even begin to think of buying chips - let alone ready fitted locos. Fitting chips to items I have still means getting insidethem anyway, and its cheaper to remove the lights as opposed to fitting chips. As I've worked in telecomms/electronics since 1964, I don't want to get involved with it in my hobby unless I really want to, thanks! I can't see any advantages over plain DC for me. Stewart Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
naugytrax Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 It all reminds me of the toy trains of my father's youth. The Hornby Gauge O electric trains which he passed on to me featured bl**dy great 20 volt bulbs in the middle of the smokebox doors of the steam engines! Which, looking back, were probably just a marketing dodge intended to increase the young owner's excitement at having an electric train rather than a clockwork one. It took me years to realize that real steam locos never had these things - at least, not in Britain. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete_mcfarlane Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I couldn't agree with you more, Stewart. In a similar vein, I don't understand why locos such as Bachmann's Deltic now come with fully illuminated cabs - you wouldn't after all drive down the motorway at night with your interior lights on! The Warship is the same, and like you I can't figure why. I removed the cab lighting from mine. I was born in 1975, and one of my abiding childhood memories is of dingy electric lighting. The school hall of my infant school was lit by huge glass globes that seemed to emit very little light so on a dull day (i.e. October to April) the room was in semi darkness. Many rooms in people's houses were lit by a single bulb. Even at 100W, a single bulb doesn't really light up a room. Street lights were generally the dingy white kind, rather than the modern yellow sodium lamps. The less said about a school trip to Communist Romania the better - they had a lightbulb shortage so only about 50% of the fittings had bulbs in them! Coach lighting also seemed to be very dim - visit a preserved railway in winter (or one with a tunnel) and sit in a Mk1 with it's feeble incandescent lighting (even if the battery is holding a decent charge) and it's no surprise that they had individual reading lights. Most 4mm scale layouts with lighting are lit up like Piccadilly Circus (which also stick out in my childhood memory for being so brightly lit). You'd also think that the novelty of blue and white LEDs would have worn off by now. There was a suggestion in the MRJ a few years back of modelling a layout in perpetual nightime, with everything lit by scale lighting.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 ...I was born in 1975, and one of my abiding childhood memories is of dingy electric lighting... Many rooms in people's houses were lit by a single bulb. Even at 100W, a single bulb doesn't really light up a room... Sorry, Pete, I just had to laugh at that! Even in the seventies, I well remember several older folk of my acquantance for whom a 15W bulb was the standard fitting everywhere except in the living room. There, the height of extravagance was a 40W bulb. Fortunately, they usually had a coal fire burning that often produced more light than the bulb. Did you sample the Romanian railways? Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagrizz Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I don't think I shall ever forget an overnight train from Bucharest to Timisoara in 1980. Standing room only, so we were in the corridor with p*ss flowing out of the toilets and some Romanian guy whose method of clearing his nasal passages resulted in his snot all over the corridor floor. At Timisoara the next morning the train emptied and it was just a few of us Inter-rail westerners left on it for the onward journey to Belgrade. Cue opportunitstic officials extracting hard currency from us before we were allowed over the border. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete_mcfarlane Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Did you sample the Romanian railways? I didn't sadly - we were ferried everywhere in decrepit buses. Not fun on mountain roads in the winter. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
45125 Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 No, it's not just you. If you can see them in daylight without looking right down the lens, they're too bright. Once they did start to use built in lights on conventional DMUs they were something like 60W bulbs - hopeless with the sun shining on them and the cause of plenty of delays while guards confirmed they were actually lit. Marker lamps on DMUs were something like a 30w lamp (same as those fitted in compartment stock), the red lamps fitted from around early 1980 were also the same lamp. Most locos had 40 or 60w lamps fitted as did dmus fitted with roller blinds. All of these lamps were pretty much useless unless stood directly in front of them, even the ones with a magnifying lens. All had very dull yellow glow as they were lamps with a clear globe, the odd lamp did have a pearlised globe which gave a slightly whiter glow to the lamp. Most of the lamps fitted to the offering from the various model manufactures look more akin to the landing lights of airliners rather than railway vehicles. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 I said this before/ All my time of waiting for trains or looking at trains in all weathers in daytime or night from 1964 to 1989 - if someone had asked me about lit diesel locomotives I'd have thought they were pulling my leg! As everyone has said the lights were only noticeable if you were within feet of them. Completely the opposite of North American operations - where you can see the lights before seeing the loco. Best, Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marty Mc Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 Hi Seeing is believing. Im not so sure about how bright lights were but this I know I have old British train mags from the 40s through to the sixtys and you would be surprised how ell lit some of the locos were in the photos. Watch this video of called Snow from the early 60's and tell me if you cannot see the lights on during the day which also happen to be on steam locos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4pJwcE7JI Let me help you. White light clearly visible on steam loco at 2.51 minutes. How about that Southern loco at 4.13 minutes with markers and express lights on clearly very visible during the day. Most of this footage is pre 1948 but tell me would you consider that light on the steam loco bright at 1.26??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceR2yUqFJLM&feature=related See picture of 3 coaches. 3 different levels of lighting here. The one you cannot see may be considered prototypical??? If that's the case what's the point. After all the mags and videos I have seen from the 30-70s I dont really buy into the poor lighting anymore. Cheers Martin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewartingram Posted March 3, 2012 Author Share Posted March 3, 2012 Think its time I transferred this to the Bachmann wishlist/speculation thread? Scale lighting to be fitted to green era diesels - ie NONE AT ALL ? I'll get my coat..... Stewart Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 I said this before/ All my time of waiting for trains or looking at trains in all weathers in daytime or night from 1964 to 1989 - if someone had asked me about lit diesel locomotives I'd have thought they were pulling my leg! As everyone has said the lights were only noticeable if you were within feet of them. Completely the opposite of North American operations - where you can see the lights before seeing the loco. Best, Pete. I've mentioned before, I believe, the 'high-visibility' lights fitted to the EE Type 3s and Swindon Cross-Country units for Central Wales Line use at the end of the 1960s. These were basically Mini headlights, mounted on brackets on the fronts. The result was quite startling; whereas an approaching 'normal' train would only become visible at night as it passed the goods shed at Llanelli (about 150 yards), the Central Wales trains were visible as they passed under the bridge at the western end of Llandeilo Junction yard (about a mile). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 My experience was on the ER ex.GER... Best, Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.