Rear Dynamo light not turning off

[Deleted member 26715]

Obviously not a member of the Wheel Tappers and Shunters Social Club .

Not renewed my membership for many a year

 

[silva]

Having a red light showing is against railway regulations since it could cause confusion to a train driver and so risk an accident.

Other (mine) reasons are that at a shop visit I don't want to leave my bike with lights on drawing attention from the curious and the thieves, and that I rather want to preserve the capacitor energy so that when back I can switch on to see something, energy that got lost for nothing in the case of inability to switch off.

 

[andrew_s]

The red button dumps the capacitor, so kills the light at rest.

The red button is an off switch.
If you wheel the bike a yard or so, the light will come back on, and stay on for another 4 minutes, without you needing to ride the bike half a mile or whatever to charge the capacitor back up, which you would do if the capacitor charge had been dumped.

To OP:
Only some lights have an off switch.
The Toplight Line rack-mounted lights have the red switch
The 4D-lite (mudguard light) has a couple of contacts on the outside you can short with a key
The Secula and Seculite mudguard lights don't have any off switch

If I'm on a bike with a switch, I turn the light off to stop helpful strangers coming looking for me to tell me I left my light on.

 

[Andy in Germany]

I've never come across the "Off" although that may be because Dynamo lights are a legal requirement here, and recently the law changed to say new bikes must have stand lights at the rear at least. I'm not sure about the ruling on railway stations.

On one hand I can see the logic, but on the other hand I miss the opportunity to switch the front light off and ride in the moonlight, something I often did in the rural lanes of Devon.

 

[citybabe]

The red button is an off switch.
If you wheel the bike a yard or so, the light will come back on, and stay on for another 4 minutes, without you needing to ride the bike half a mile or whatever to charge the capacitor back up, which you would do if the capacitor charge had been dumped.

To OP:
Only some lights have an off switch.
The Toplight Line rack-mounted lights have the red switch
The 4D-lite (mudguard light) has a couple of contacts on the outside you can short with a key
The Secula and Seculite mudguard lights don't have any off switch

If I'm on a bike with a switch, I turn the light off to stop helpful strangers coming looking for me to tell me I left my light on.

it is a Secura rear mudguard light and it doesn’t have an off switch

 

[Ming the Merciless]

It's the norm. The rear light has its own capacitor and so will stay on independent of the front light, when you stop. It's nothing to worry about for trains I often turn off the front light a few mins before reaching the station. The light are then drained down and unlit when I reach the platform.

 

[silva]

All the modular click on mount battery powered lights have a button to switch them off. Sometims you have to "scroll" through X blinking modes to reach it, but it's off, immediate light out.
A dynamo powered one, model with standlight (apparently they don't all have this), some/alot (I found brands that do provide it) scrapped this switchoff button, which has nothing to do with safety since it's the rider deciding on/off and leaving on means staying on till electrical load storage empty. The only reason left is to save some bucks, ie the price of a button and related provisions.
So for those that want to be able to turn a light off, just skip the brands that cut costs.