With respect to the "overpowering" cab lights on some of the TMCC-era F-3 scale engines, I just did a quick solution on mine, and snipped one of the wires to each of the cab bulbs. There's enough light coming back from the headlight area to provide subtle lighting in the cab that's acceptable without any cab lights. Without the cab light bulbs, there's not much light visible in the cab when running with the train room lights on normally, which is good, but there's some illumination that shows in darker lighting conditions.
On some other types of engines, I removed the bulbs from their positions in the cab area and pulled them back inside the body away from the cab.
