Backyard railroad lighting

Well, to be honest, my own sloth-like ways may have contributed somewhat.

In the summer of 2006, I took a wooden, three-foot tall lighthouse Shirleen and I had bought years ago at a hobby store and put it onto the layout. And there it basically sat through the fall and into the winter. After the second (or perhaps third) rain, I remembered that it might not be water-proof and at least stored it underneath the layout, but still outdoors.

Sometime in late winter, the gardener moved the lighthouse and the top, including the lens house and the roof, fell off. He carted the remains to the house and showed them to me. I brought them into the garage and said, “Oh, well. Another repair project.”

But before I even got back into the house, I wondered, “Hey, could I put a real light into that lighthouse?”

And, hence, a quest to illuminate my backyard, elevated railroad was started.

You can get an idea about the railroad by visiting its construction pages, where I detail, ad nauseam, how I built the thing and what it looks like, generally. And while the layout has a number of 110-volt light fixtures on it, they are to provide enough light for night-time running, not to make the layout look quaint and tinklely.

In searching for a way to illuminate the lighthouse, I Google’d upon Bodnar’s pages, which included a circuit he sells that creates a specific, stepped, wave of light that looks as though a Fresnel lens is rotating inside. I corresponded with him about his circuit and asked if I could use it with the standard 12-volt garden lighting system (I had a Malibu 200-watt timed transformer) I had installed.

Bodnar responded that while the Malibu system should work, wasn’t its output AC? His device was DC.

Ah, yes. I hadn’t thought of that.

Bodnar said he could solve that problem and a week later a circuit showed up that handled it: he had inserted a bridged rectifier and a large capacitor into the circuit before the place where his standard DC-based transformer would have gone.

From there, the rebuilding of the lighthouse takes on a story of its own.

But Bodnar’s ease in solving the problem of converting AC to DC current rekindled my childhood fascination with electricity and all things electrical (his love of the PICAXE, as well, gave me the opportunity to build a crossing light, something I had wanted to do for years).

So, with Bodnar’s unwitting prompting, I started out on an odyssey to illuminate my backyard railway. I had two givens: one, that I would use the Malibu, 12-volt, clock-operated garden lighting transformer and wiring that I already had in place, and two, that I would use LEDs for illumination.

(I’ve been asked that if I was so concerned about the amount of electricity these projects would take, why not use solar power? Though the Pacifica, Calif., chamber of commerce claims 274 days of sunshine a year, many are apparently counted if the sun shines through the fog for only a minute or two. I’ve tried backyard solar lights here and they just don’t work, primarily because of the fog, but also because of the setting of my backyard, which has numerous tall trees that block sunlight.)

I also want to point out that while I’ve always had an affinity for electronics, I hadn’t attempted to solder a circuit together since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. Conceptually, I understood what an integrated circuit was; in practice, I hadn’t attempted to trace a circuit and identify components in almost 40 years. I went out, bought a soldering iron and developed a new set of skills for these projects. To use an California-ism, I feel empowered.

Which is also to say that there are many people who know a whole lot more about this stuff than I do; what I document here is my process and my successes. If I’ve done something “wrong,” I’m sure electrical engineers will set me right and I will update and correct these pages as necessary.

Here is the story of how I went about it, with some simplistic circuits and building tips and tricks:

• LED’ing me down the garden (lighting) path

• The simple five-volt DC circuit

• Building 1:20.3-scale lamp posts

• A structure illuminated with ‘fire light’

• A structure illuminated with ‘fluorescent light’

• A circuit to flash multiple LEDs

• Bodnar’s circuit in a lighthouse (Coming soon.)

• The half-scale, four-lamp RR crossing light (Coming soon.)

(Disclaimer: Although I provide all the information on these pages in good faith and believe it to be reliable, I don’t represent it to be necessarily complete or entirely accurate. I’m human and I make mistakes. Before attempting any projects outlined here, you are expected to review the material and make your best determination whether it is suitable for your use. In no event will I be responsible for damages of any nature resulting from the use or the reliance upon this information or any product to which I refer. Through links and text I do recommend products on these pages; I’m not liable if you choose products I’ve recommended and they don’t work for you. Though most of these projects deal with low-voltage electronics, you shouldn’t expect them to be danger-free: in an incorrect implementation, garden lighting voltage can and will create heat, smoke and potentially fire. Take precautions. Test. Test again. All said, if you burn down your house — or your backyard — it is not my fault.)

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