LGB Firebox Light - A Klaus Creation

 One warm summer night in the mid 1980's Klaus was sitting on his back porch. 

He had just finalized the improvements for the first Mogul #2018D, namely the driving characteristics.

Now he was relaxing,  enjoying his LGB layout with an American freight train passing by. Led by a Mogul and trailed by a lighted caboose. After a while he noticed that watching the loco go by all he could actually see was the dominant headlight followed by dark ghost cars and the lighted caboose marking the end of the train.

Courtesy of Hollyhobo

Klaus had a clear sense that something was missing here.

There was a stoker standing in the front of the (Mogul) tender apparently doing something but he could neither see the engineer nor the stoker. Klaus assumed that the stoker was about to open the firebox door fixing to shoveling coal into the firebox. This must have some influence on the lighting situation in the cabin and front of the tender. The stoker must be standing right in the midst of this light. And that was it.

Now, how did he put this into reality? His first idea was to install 3 or 4 lights hidden somewhere in the rear part of the boiler shining through narrow tubes single light beams onto the stoker. The drawback of this idea was that when the engine passed by there could have been a chance that a bystander could look right into one of those lights. Basically, a good idea but not close enough to reality.

This made Klaus realize that there is actually more to reality than initially hits the eye. In a real steam loco there is a light source (fire box) which illuminates the control cabin and the stoker and the front of the tender. This light source should not be kept a secret. The bitter truth is that the stoker opens the fire

courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

box and is then showered in a flood of (fiery) light. This consequently led to the idea to have lights being reflected in the lower door half of the fire box door. The lights had to be one red and one orange to give a warm, realistic light. the lights had to flash in two frequencies that are not compatible to each other. The red one would do a slow pace while  the yellow one worked a faster pace. The firebox light was supposed to jump into action every 90 seconds.

To install the firebox light Klaus would have to remove the lower half of the firebox door in the rear boiler part of the Mogul. Behind the still closed upper half firebox door the lights could hide. The light would be reflected by a reflector behind the lower open firebox door. This would even give the impression of embers glowing.

A smart electronic board would control the light bulbs.

He had it all worked out - in theory. Now he had to translate all into reality: finding the fitting light, creating the needed electronic board, cutting the Mogul open (again...)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++to be continued ...........................