(erielack) RE: Signals

["Tupaczewski, Paul R (Paul)" <paul.tupaczewski_@_alcatel-lucent.com>]

> Here's something to bring to the signal discussion. Erie 
> seemed to like the searchlight aspect.  These signals used 
> one lamp.  These bulbs seemed to last along time.  What type 
> of lamp was used in these signals?  The signals used a 
> Fresnel lens to focus light in the horizontal plane.  I'm 
> assuming they ran on DC placing less stress on filaments.  
> How often did signal maintainers visit signals?
> 
> Ed Montgomery



Ed,

I'm guessing that these lamps were run at lower power, which greatly extended their lives. The Fresnel lens did a good job of amplifying that light (if you look at a signal lens from a shallow side angle, you'll see the light isn't all the bright - it's just focused to be bright at the engineer's line of sigh)

Another thing that I would like to point out - the glass lenses for the green aspects were actually a blue-green color that was closer to blue than green. With the yellowish-tinge of standard filament-based light, it would result in a greenish color (yellow + blue = green), but the green was more of a blue-green color.

This is a personal pet peeve of mine in modeling signal systems - I've NEVER seen a railroad signal whose green color is similar to the green color an LED puts out. I've started to "dye my own" - I take white LEDs (which already have a bit of a blue tint) and use glass stain to dye them the proper color to match the prototype. Hey Jim Harr - would this make a good article for "From the Workbench?"

	- Paul

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