# Beacon light needed



## Bill Swindell (Jan 2, 2008)

I want to put a yellow beacon light on the roof of a locomotive. I found a yellow LED holder for a 5mm LED, What I want is a larger yellow housing that I can mount on the roof. Does anyone have any suggestions?


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## Richard Smith (Jan 2, 2008)

Bill, 

Clear or yellow rod from TAP. Cut off piece and drilll out on drill press enough for the bulb leaving one end solid. Cut to final length and round off solid end on sander. Polish up with toothpaste. Check with Russ at TAP for the best rod to use and if he has a better idea for polishing the rounded off top of the rod. Toothpaste used to work slick on removing scratches in acrylic fish tanks & should work on other plastics as well. Anyway the rod is pretty cheap and you'll get enough to try several ways just in case.


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## dbodnar (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Bill Swindell on 31 Jul 2011 10:07 PM 
I want to put a yellow beacon light on the roof of a locomotive. I found a yellow LED holder for a 5mm LED, What I want is a larger yellow housing that I can mount on the roof. Does anyone have any suggestions? 
Bill - how about a 10mm diffused yellow LED? If it is too large you could turn it down.

Link to 10 mm LED 


dave


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## JackM (Jul 29, 2008)

And, if you have a 10mm white LED, Tamiya Clear Yellow paint from the hobby store will get rid of the bluish light. They also make a Clear Orange which might look closer to some plastic "yellow" 
beacons I've seen.

JackM


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## Paul Burch (Jan 2, 2008)

Bill,
You could order one from USA. The one they use on the SD40-2. R22-403. I also have several new ones that were used on the Lionel 1/32 GP's. A 3mm led will fit but it would take a little carefull drilling for the 5mm. The USA one is probably the better casting. I could send you a couple if you want the Lionel ones over the USA one. Here is a photo of one of the Lionel units on a kitbashed GP38-2. Not a real good photo of it though.


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## Jerry Barnes (Jan 2, 2008)

I think Ozark has a casting for a top light, but not sure what size it is.


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## Bill Swindell (Jan 2, 2008)

The USA lens might work. TAP does not have cast colored acrylic rod. Other sources have a $60 minimum order. Putting an LED through the roof won't do what I want.


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Bill

Have you tried Plastuct

Plastruct - Solid Fluorescent Acrylic Round Rod[/b]


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Maynot be what your like, but we put a blinking 5 MM blinking yellow LED on top of our Diesels and paint the bottom ring silver. Add around 800 ohm 1/4 w Resis. to it in the corect directon and will start blinking at 6 to 8 volts off of track power. 
Really show up at night. We found our blinking LED's at Radio shick.


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## toddalin (Jan 4, 2008)

You could use plastic Christmas decorations "turned down" and hollowed out. That's what I did on one of my bridges.


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## hcampbell (Jan 2, 2008)

Probably not what you need, but here's a great model beacon .
Beacon

Harvey C. 
@import url(http://www.mylargescale.com/Provide...ad.ashx?type=style&file=SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/providers/htmleditorproviders/cehtmleditorprovider/dnngeneral.css);


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## noelw (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By hcampbell on 01 Aug 2011 02:06 PM 
Probably not what you need, but here's a great model beacon .
Beacon

Harvey C. 
@import url(http://www.mylargescale.com/Provide...ad.ashx?type=style&file=SyntaxHighlighter.css);@import url(/providers/htmleditorproviders/cehtmleditorprovider/dnngeneral.css); 

Now that a neat beacon...


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Bill

I know that the following is for smaller scales, however, I don't see why it couldn't be adapted for use in larger scales too.

Ngineering - Lighting Effects for the Railroad
[*] Rotating Beacon Simulators - Video of Effect[/b]

[*] Rotating Beacon Simulator - 3-LED Construction (N8042)[/b]

[*] Rotating Beacon Simulator - Connecting (N8042)[/b]

[*] Rotating Beacon Simulator - 4-LED Construction (N8042C)[/b]

[*] Rotating Beacon Simulator - Connecting (N8042C)[/b]
[/list]


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## Bill Swindell (Jan 2, 2008)

Harvey, I can't access the web site in your post. I would like to see what you are talking about.


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## Bill Swindell (Jan 2, 2008)

OOPS


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## jebouck (Jan 2, 2008)

Ram Track might make one. I haven't looked thru the web site.

http://www.ramrcandramtrack.com/index.html


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## bnsfconductor (Jan 3, 2008)

Steve, 
That's the closest model beacon I've seen to the real thing! How in the world did you find that link? I'm sure it would be easy to up scale it for large scale, and maybe easier to construct. 
Craig


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## Bill Swindell (Jan 2, 2008)

What I really need is the lense. The circuit is not a problem. I use a TCS FL-4 lighting function decoder.\ with nan LED for the light.


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