Fan-cooled LED headlamp

Don't want to worry you after all that work... but are you sure gas mantles are that yellow? ISTR them as surprisingly white - more so than a standard incandescent lamp. But it's many years since I saw one.

Andy

Gas mantles often had a pronounced greenish-tinged light. (They were still using them on many Southern Region stations back when I was at school in Surrey.)

Slightly greener than incandescent lights, according to my digital camera. But it's a while since I used one, and ICBA filling up an Aladdin lamp to check. I last saw the standby gas lamp in the "useful junk" drawer in the house kitchen, along with a couple of spare mantles and gas cartridges.

I wasn't going to say anything. B-)

Agreed, a nice white light with sometimes a hint of green. That yellow looks more like a wick based oil lamp light source than a gas (or paraffin) based mantle one.

About a year, the last power cut...

Yup, the butane/propane gas lanterns we use when camping give off a white light.

However, whilst Matty does say gas mantle, I wonder if that is what he means? If these are to replace the original lights on steam train surely they would have been paraffin or something, not gas anyway?

The original lamp was very likely to be a wick based oil lamp, and I wanted a nice cheery yellow colour to match the existing small interior oil lamps. Besides a pure white light might look a bit much like LEDs, and I can't have that!

Some early steam engines had arc lights, but other drivers complained about being blinded by them. I hope to make a steam powered generator to keep the battery charged. There will be a lot of lights on the rest of the train, and they need power.