Alert,

RAYOVAC Alkaline 6 volt lantern battery will not fully seat into the modern Rail-Tek Suppy railroad lantern . This battery has a metallic outer cover that dose not fit well which makes it impossible to freely slide to the end of the battery compartment. The RAYOVAC zinc-carbon 6 volt plastic body battery has no problem at all. I never had any problems with any other brand of 6 volt batteries.

Most brands of those metal-cased 6 volt batteries won't fit (or won't fit very well) into a trainman's lantern. You can kinda squeeze one into a stainless steel Conger, but they'll firmly wedge themselves into a plastic Star brand lantern.

In any case, those batteries are two to three times as heavy as a standard 6 volt battery with a plastic shell, too heavy for giving signals all night long. Just stick with the standard plastic she'll batteries.

Make your own, it's just 4 D cells in a tin box. Solder the cells in series, glue the cells together, wrap the cells in tape so it's a snug fit.

-Hudson

Actually, you will find that todays 6 volt square lantern batteries are made up entirely of standard AA batteries.
Bob D.

If you're going to put D-cells in there (in some sort of DIY carrier), make it 5 cells and make them NiMH. Then you can recharge them at will.

Lantern batteries made of AA cells? There was a deplorable internet video going around which tried to get innocent non technical people to destroy lantern batteries in hopes of getting cheap AA cells. In the video the fellow opens up a battery and simply dumps out a score of AA cells. They weren't even wired up in any fashion. I have not opened a lantern battery lately but I would expect to find 4 cylindrical cells. AA cells would be highly inefficient with unnecessary wasted space and interconnection.

Last time I saw an open 6 volt lantern battery (a broken Rayovac battery in the used battery bin at work), they are actually comprised of four 1.5 volt F cells. You don't find that size of battery anywhere else for consumer use, except inside a 6 volt lantern battery. An F cell is the same diameter as a modern D cell, but just a bit longer.

As far as using an adapter, you can buy these 6 volt lantern battery adapters, https://images.app.goo.gl/KSG8Wo1NDZyqUJJM8 which allow you to use four D cells in series to get the 6 volts. Note that there is a plastic 'stand" built into the bottom of the adapter, to make up for the difference in length between the F cells inside a standard lantern battery, and the D cells used inside the adapter.

I'm going to go and hijack the thread to ask, why do some of these lights have two bulbs in them?

IIRC, the two bulbs are different distances from the reflector, the effect of which is to give the choice of spot or flood illumination. It was also handy if a bulb went out at an inopportune moment.

One light was the spot light. It has a small reflector dish behind it. The other is the signal bulb. It is meant to be seen from the side, so that the engineer can see the train man giving lantern signals by night.

The new Railtek lanterns only give you spot, or spot & signal simultaneously. I don't know about the Star brand lanterns.