Gas Lamp Twinkler

I’ve been… what’s the word? “Unenthusiastic” about the hobby lately. But this week I decided I needed to do something railway-related. Fortunately, my fried Simon in the UK had sent me a box of goodies earlier this year and the care package included a small electronics project: A circuit to make LEDs twinkle like gas lamps on a station platform.

I have two such lamps on Bydemill – my 7mm scale layout depicting a Great Western Railway branch line terminal in the Edwardian era – so this seemed like a perfect, quick upgrade. And it was!

The Gas Lamp Twinkler kit came from the Model Electronic Railway Group (MERG kit 61). It’s quite inexpensive (a couple of quid, if I recall) but available to members only. The kit is designed to create the flares and flickers for two or three gas lamps, depending on where one installs wire bridges on the board.

Despite its small size, this kit is packed with resistors, diodes, capacitors, and an IC. I spent an enjoyable few hours in at the bench soldering components into the supplied printed circuit board – then another 45 minutes or so retrofitting it to my simple wiring (basically, an on/off switch) on the layout.

All went as intended and the instructions were comprehensive – although it took a bit of reading, and re-reading, and puzzling to determine that for a two-LED installation such as mine, I needed to substitute bridges for capacitors 3 and 4 (as well as leave one resistor off the board).

I don’t think I’ve actually soldered components to a board before so this was a good learning experience. And I like the resulting effect, which is subtle and pleasing. I just might have to tackle some more soldering projects now the bench is set up for them…

Thanks, Simon!