Well, today was kind of discouraging. Here’s the new autofade lamp test circuit, upgraded:
And here’s the key:
A: I replaced the red LED with a flashlight lamp. The soldering operation was successful and the light is bright enough.
B: I upgraded the capacitor from 1000 microfarads to 3300.
C: The transistor got hot, so I swapped out the 2N3904 to a 2N4401.
And . . . it doesn’t work.
When the LED is swapped back in, the circuit works fine, but there’s not enough base current to amplify the collector current enough to light the lamp. And I do mean that I don’t even see a glimmer.
Where to now? Try a power transistor, try two transistors in piggy-back, try different resistance values. I’m sure there’s a way to make this work, but we’ll probably put it aside for a while because I want to spend some time brainstorming ideas for other future products and how to market them.
Maybe I should draw something in Sketchup. That’s often relaxing.
Engineer Zero 
How much volts require your flashlight lamp to turn on?
The Radio Shack package doesn’t say. But the rated voltage is 2.33 volts and the rated current is 270 mA, if that helps. It’s a lamp type 243 and a bulb type GTL-3, if that helps.
BTW, I got the thing to work. I’ll discuss on Monday.