I am building this 9x13 HO layout in a basement room with negligible natural light. The only light fixture in the room is a single large LED fixture on the ceiling. I plan to have some additional lighting installed by an electrician. I would appreciate any good ideas on how to better light my layout. Thanks!
Now is a good time to be thinking about this since I suspect many and perhaps most layou t owners wish there was something different they could have done about lighting. It would be interesting if there were layouts in your vicinity that you could visit and ask about.
`LED lighting certainly changes many old assumptions that were formed when fluorescent lighting became so popular. I have fluorescent lighting mostly of the cool white variety and note the fading that fluorescent causes on scenery, books on shelves, and railroad art on the walls. It causes challenges to layout photography and now that the first generation of tubes are failing I face the challenge of trying to swap out new bulps without damaging stuff on the layout (or throwing my back out). I know indoor LEDs last a long time but some thought to ease of fixture replacement is not a bad idea.
Here are a few thoughts that come to mind. The “color” of lighting is an issue that has been written about in MR because it certainly does affect the realism of paint schemes and scenery items. Using the same lighting “color” on the layout that is used where you do your painting and weathering is one common piece of advice. I frankly do not know what options are available for LEDs but it is worth looking into.
Even-ness of light. That was always the problem when incandescent bulbs were used for layout lighting. There’d be bright spots and dim spots. Fluorescent helped particularly if mounted high enough. I don’t know how LED
I think track lighting is the best way to go since you can move the lights to where they need to be and you can add additional fixtures if you need more lights. The tracks should be over the ailses so that they can shine at an angle towards the layout and not shine in your eyes. Make sure you get the fixtures which can be aimed. Some can only point stright down. You don’t want that kind.
You can also have another track with lights that shine on your background walls if you want to get carried away. But that is more for people with experience in theaterical lighting who want to add clouds or sunsets or different color skies.
This is true that lights in the aisle can create shadows but it depends on factors like the height of the layout and how wide the aisles are. If the layout is low then shadows are more likely.
If the lights are above the layout then the structures and scenery can also cause shadows and the lights will also shine in people’s eyes. It’s a balancing act.
A valance works well because the lights are right on the edge of the layout but it can make a small room seem a lot smaller and claustrophobic.
When you swap out the old flourescent tubes there are now LEDs that will substitute with no problem. I was goind to do the change for the old ones in my garage (it originally invovled cutting wires to eliminate the ballast, etc.) and discovered that all I had to do was buy the properLED tubes, put them in in place of the old flourescents and I was done.
This is what I did:
Lots of 1X4 LED panels. These are 5000 Kelvins and dimmable. I bought them from Lightup.com for a very reasonable price (roughly a third of what you’d pay ad Home Despot).
The layout is very well lit, even for my old eyes.
I originally used fluorescent lights in the drop-ceiling of my layout room, as I had found a good (and affordable) source for the devices, and the lighting tubes had always been very affordable too.
When I added a partial upper level to my layout, I had to add more lighting to the underside, as otherwise it would have been too dark to see much of that area, so I added more fluorescent fixtures, along with a few LED bulbs in some of the corners of the lower level…
Here’s a view of the entry to the layout room, with fluorescent lights on both the upper and lower level to the left…
…and LED lights on the upper level, to the right, and fluorescents on the lower level, which is a staging yard.
While the LEDs emit a decent amount of light, when they’re close to the layout, as shown, they need to be fairly close together, as the light-spread is quite limited limited.
For that reason, I still use fluorescents on the areas beneath the partial upper level (there are a couple of LEDs in the corners) but if I wanted to use only LEDs there, they would likely need to be spaced at 2’ intervals, which would require 21 of those pot-lights.
There are more fluorescents here…
…and even more here…
…but I have added some of the LED pot lights, and will likely remove the fluorescent
Upon seeing a valanced shadow box layout in the pages of MRR mag. I knew that was the type of layout I wanted to build. After eleven years of service the GE 4100K T-8 florescent tubes are beginning to fail and require careful moves when replacing. To my eye there’s been little to no fading, but most of the structures and scenery are in the neighborhood of eight years old or less.
Wishing you luck and loads of fun building your layout. Regards, Peter
This vintage thread has some input on lighting. In general I have a work and maintenance mode where the whole room is lit up and then a “running mode” where only the layout is highlighted and is dimmable and flexible (track lighting is great for quick changes to highlight an area or eliminate shadows).
https://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/269457.aspx
Much of my main room lighting went from magnetic ballasts and T12 fluorescents to electronic ballasts and T8 tubes then finally to LED replacement tubes, eliminating the ballasts all together supplemented with LED thin-panel lay-ins.
Good Luck, Ed
Regular track lighting with LED bulbs. Thats what I do and being LED’s draw less power, you can get a lot of them on a strip. The only thing you have to do different is they must be plugged in as they will take any standard bulb and I have more than enough cans to blow any breaker if I used incandesent.
Thanks for the tips! I think LEDs over the tracks seems like a good way to go.
I would post a picture of my layout if I could figure out how. Maybe I’m too new to the forum?