The gallery to description:

- Light without gas or electric – Oil lamps! -

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This gallery was planned as a revised article in Model Railroad Hobbyist; prepared especially for building illuminated oil lamps in HO scale.

I think that the gallery gives enough hints with this pictures, the step by step documentation and the short captions that experienced modelers could start an attempt to build own oil lamps, however my recommendation is to start with some additional parts then the wished number of lamps because I’m sure that some of these lamps will get lost on their way to finished and usable oil lamps.
I know from own experiences what I write about.

 
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• First you need very small clear beads, I choosed such of 1,5 millimeter (around .06in) which have a hole large enough that you can put very small LEDs into the beads.
• And second I recommend to use pre-wired warm-white or golden-white LEDs of size 0402. I purchase my LEDs from LED Baron who offers a wide range of LEDs in all sizes and colors. This maker LED Baron is a very trustworthy dealer who ships also to USA and all countries around the world.
  Please check the size of LED made in China. They appear to be longer as 1mm so they will not fit the small beads!
• If you would like to build red shining oil lanterns you must use red LEDs for your work. Red beads are not available in this small size. The result is a good looking red light.
• Still a short word about resistors where I assume that we speak about 16 volts AC, DC or DCC.
  - I would like to suggest the use of 2.7 k-ohm resistors or more yet for white LEDs,
  - or use 1.8 k-ohm resistors for red LEDs.
  - You may reduce the resistance a bit for a more bright light,
  - however never go below a value of 1000 ohms!
  I think that you will get a good success with this values.
• As last a short addition where I found a video from an Australian modeler who added such a small LED-lamp into the hand of a conductor. See this short video here where you can see how this modeler realized to add such a glowing lantern in the hand of a model figure.

Please let repeat me my opinion from above – You ought to start with building your own oil lamps only if you have some experiences and enough patience at your modeling work. In this case I would like to wish you – Good success!
 

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