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I would like to start this off by giving full credit for this idea to the late Brian Ellerby, who has used these on his Copper River & Yukon. After witnessing how simple this made it for new operators to quickly and accurately determine where the uncoupling magnets were, I knew that I would have to install some on my D&RGW. I had previously placed a bush to indicate the ramp locations, which was fine as long as there was just the initial cinder ballast; however, as areas became further scenically developed, the inevitable (and frequent) question became, "WHICH bush...?" Hmmm....
Photo 1: Looking east towards some magnets...
Photo 2: The LED's are now illuminated. One is just to the left of the switch stand lantern and the other is to the right.
Photo 3: The darker soil around the LED's is still wet, as I added a bit more ground cover after drilling the hole for the LED. This should dry the same as the surrounding area...
Photo 4: The LED's are now illuminated in this view.
Photo 5: Looking west towards some magnets...
Photo 6: Once again, the LED's are lit up.
Photo 7: As noted previously, the darker ballast areas are a result of some still-wet ballast that was added to repair areas that were disturbed when the holes for the LED's were drilled.
Photo 8: The LED's are lit up.
Photo 9: I have each town powered by a separate On-Off switch. The crew is responsible for "turning out the lights" at each location once their work there is done.
"TECHNICAL" (??) NOTES
1. The LED's are Yellow Diffused LED's with a T1 base and are ~1/8" in diameter. Brian actually found some even smaller ones that are <3/32" in diameter, but his eyesight is better!
2. I have a 1/4 watt 1K ohm resistor on each LED. The source power is 10 volts DC.
Jim
March 2001
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