"warm white" is IMO a useless

"warm white" is IMO a useless descriptor... Lighting should be described by color temperature in  Deg K....

My criteria are listed here... yours may differ

• Steamers should be 2700K and below... Oil lamps toward the yellow, electric toward 2700.   There's not much range below 2700 before going Yellow.
• transition diesels should be 2700  - 3000Tops!
• modern diesels would be 3000K to 3800K -  I've shopped for 3800K and find nothing, so I'd allow 4000K

Above 4000K, colors look a bit too blue for headlamps.    You can also find a Tamiya 'transparent' paint... and add yellow to the lens until the color is right.

As for brightness-- I couldn't tell from a photo  - the photo could have been simply overexposed. But I suspect it is a bit too bright.   If you squint to read the number boards, it's too bright.

I have Found

That to tone down the brightness of these "hi intensity" LEDs that a bigger resistor is needed. A 200 ohm jump will not produce a visual difference. Try 2-3K. I use about 4K with my "bright" leds and it looks good to me. Also diesel lights in the 50's did not have the brightness intensity that is available with modern products.

I agree with Peter that using a color temp to describe these colors is more universally understood. Like small, medium and large; where are the cutoffs?

Espee over Donner

Canopy glue for my taste.

Canopy glue is my choice.  It is a little translucent and hides the smd slightly better than clear.  I agree that lights and ditch lights should be very bright.  The picture below is upside down but you can see the ditch lights fairly clearly.

At any distance the detail disappears when they are off.

Try the three foot test.... These are all 603s.

Nick

0603s in ditch light housings. AWESOME !!!

Nice, Nick!

What size resistor did you use on them? I think those are not quite as bright as the ones on my CSX unit, but not by much. They look just about right.

Did possibly wire two SMDs in series for the headlights or are they individually wired?

@K

The LokSound decoder had the resistors and the pair of ditch lights, the pair of headlights and the pair of number board lights were each run in series.  The decoder should be able to adjust the intensity of the light from the LEDs.  The number boards were way to bright and that’s how I dimmed them down.

Thanks for the kind words.  I’ve been happy with the results.

Nick

Mama never said I was bright

For what it's worth, and to the surprise of no one who knows me, I'm in more of the "dim" camp.   The bright LEDs gave me a headache after looking at the model for a while during operations.  Like Nick, I'm primarily using the onboard resistance in Loksound Select decoders, but in my case, I have the brightness dialed down as low as it'll go, with 0402s in the ditch lights.  An example is below. 

@Kirkifer

Kirk, I use 560 ohm to 680 ohm 1/4 watt resistors for LEDs.  Usually 0603 size I find fit right inside the headlight lens holes on most shells.  Then I will make a "lens" out of fiber optic salvaged from an old Christmas tree. Ditch light are a bit tougher as I have tried several ways.  Have fabricated my own housings from leftover sprues but they never look right when off.  When on you really can't tell so I guess it really doesn't matter at that point.  I tried the 1k resistors but I thought the light was dimmer than I wanted.

@Nelson please, next time

Next time you entertain such a project... snap a few photos to show what you do, and how... it seems the "never looks right when off" problem may get a few ideas flowing from the readers... I'd love to see and offer alternatives (if my 'expertise' has such to offer).

Using SMDs

I have been using 0603 and 0402s with 800 to 1000 ohm resistors.   Canopy glue to hold them in place and a dab of translucent yellow to warm up the light just a smudge. 

Working with the magnet wire can be tedious but the results are excellent.