Installing lights on rear marker of subway with wax

You can also use a tiny bit of woodland scenics white glue.

Even after it dries, it is somewhat pliable in case you need to pull the item apart.

I used it to glue the switch lanterns on lionel turn outs that always fall off.

A little goes a long way, I am talking about one or 2 small dots of glue the size of a pin head.

I do have to ask the obvious, why not use LEDs?  If bulbs are that much of an issue, that's the solution.

It depends on the size of the mounting required.

For the smallest Red (or green) LED's, I use these 2mm Ceramic LED, they are a bit pricy, but the fit where no others will fit.

For the more common 3mm LED's, I normally shop eBay and buy in quantity, typically in 100's for a three or four cents each.  I use more 3mm LED's than any other size.  Here's an assortment that's hard to go wrong with 100 Assorted LEDs, Red, Yellow, Green for $1.69/free shipping.  There are many more good deals, I just search when I'm running low on a particular size.

Of course, for passenger car lighting, I use the LED strips that come on 5 meter rolls, I just ordered a dozen rolls of these: 5M SMD Flex LED Strip, $5.48 is the cheapest I've seen lately for these.

Gunny

Thank you for the information.  How do you make these work off track voltage without exploding them?

Thanks

Glenn

I use a diode and a resistor for each track connection.  You can connect multiple LED's in series, say the two marker lights, and only use one diode and LED.

The computation is simple.  Take whatever track voltage you have and divide by two, that's the effect of the diode.  Then, add up the voltage drop of any LED in series, say you have two red ones.  They each drop about 1.5 volts, so you have three volts.  Considering a track voltage of 18 volts, then dividing by two for the diode, you have 9 volts.  The LED's drop 3 volts, so you need to drop 6 volts for maximum light output.  Since virtually all the common LED's you'll be using run on 20ma, that's 50 ohms/volt.  6 * 50 = 300.  In this example, two series red LED's in series, you'd need 300 ohms.  A good choice is a 330 ohm 1/4W resistor, a very common size.  The diodes I use are 1N4003 for most purposes, also very common and cheap.

There have been many LED threads here, and lots of useful information has been posted about various combinations and methods of using LED's.