I was asked if I could bring down the Minecart for a run at the night run; however, it didn’t have a headlight. Being asked on Wednesday presented a challenge to have it done by the Saturday run.
I found a set of files on Printables for a Minecraft lantern that looked like I could scale to the appropriate size.
The print job was started with the lantern scaled to 50%. I printed the lantern in black ABS filament and managed to get through all the parts. I designed a quick-and-dirty clamp using laser-cut acrylic and some 3D-printed components to clamp it to the front of the minecart.
The lantern wasn’t going to provide enough light by itself, so a quick trip to The Light Bulb Man to pick up a 24V 3W MR11 lamp and a blanking plate with a mount for the forward-facing light was quickly drawn up in Fusion and printed. To get the lantern glow, a frosted plastic sheet was installed on the remaining 3 sides, and a flickering LED was wired in series with some random LEDs from the junk box; this makes the LEDs in series flicker as well.
Pine Valley Estate Railway 