I constructed the terminal block circuit again and the light was the same as with circuit board. The reason why the LED looked so dull last night was due to the way I was holding it and not covering it as with breadboard one. I think the issue may be with brightness and could be due to using the wrong resistor. I am working from an exercise manual supplied with the electronic kit I had bout, which specifies a 470R resistor.
I'm in the process of printing off the tutorials in this site for study because the exercise manual is very basic and doesn't tell you what to do if things don't work or results go as expected. Once that is done, I'll go back to circuit and figure out what is wrong. TBH, I think I need to do this and get some theory first because at the moment, I am just farting about blindly not really knowing what I'm doing.
Thanks for replying BobK & davenn