Thanks again everyone. You guys are helpful and knowledgeable. Jerry-Hat-Trick thanks for your link. I think I'll play around with that dimmer circuit and see if it will work for me. Cheers!

 

Jerry-Hat-Trick thanks for your link.

Thanks One more thought. Swap the transistor for a PNP power transistor (maybe 3A minimum) as shown so you can turn LEDs on and off individulally with small signal NPN transistors as shown below. The only difference you'll see is the pot changes brightness the other way round as a high output at pin 3 of the 555 will turn the power to the LEDs off instead of on. So swap around the pot terminals. If you want some of the LEDs to always go on and off together you can use one NPN transistor for them (as long as it can handle the current) with the branches all connected to one transistor collector. I've only shown LED number one - same arrangement repeated for LED 2 to LED n.