The politically incorrect mnemonic for resister values that I learned in school is:? "Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly" where Bad = Black, Boys = Brown, Rape = Red, Our = Orange, Young = Yellow, Girls = Green, But = Blue, Violet = Violet, Gives = Grey, and Willingly = White.? You use is as follows:? Black - 0, Brown - 1, Red - 2, Orange - 3, Yellow - 4, Green - 6, Blue - 6, Violet - 7, Grey - 8 and White - 9.? When reading a resister first 2 bands are numbers, 3rd band is number of zeros and 4th band is tolerance: Gold is 5% and Silver is 10%.? So if a resister is banded Brown-Black-Red-Silver it is 1,000 ohms 5% tolerance.? In the resister you used the bands are decoded 1, 0, 4 zeroes, and 5% or 100,000 ohms.
I installed hundreds of LEDs in locomotives over the years and have always used 1,000 ohm 1/4 watt resistors and have never had a failure.? If it too bright for your liking you use the decoder CV settings to lower the brightness.? If you use too high a resistance you are stuck with a dim headlight as you can't make it any brighter but you can always make it dimmer.
Good Luck, John Moonan
