assume led on roof/ceiling of room, not floor. how bright? white or yellow?
want curved flat black dividers so that you can’t see thru building. is it worth lighting separate rooms or just corners of floors? any point to light rear of building?
what about multi floor buildings
connectors?
You want to paint the interiors of styrene structures to prevent them glowing in the dark. I use a light colored paint to make the structure lighting brighter. I use old fashioned incandecent bulbs, their warm reddish color looks just like real light bulbs. White LED’s show a blueish light like the old cool white fluorescent tubes gave. Yellow LEDs are better looking. And the bulbs work on AC or DC and they don’t care about polarity on DC. You need to mount the bulbs high up so they do not show thru the windows. I put floors into multi story structures, it makes the view in the windows more realistic. No real building shows a gaping hole going down to the basement when you look in the windows. I drill a hole thru the layout to run the building power supply wire, I leave some slack and join it to a terminal strip underneath the layout. Remember you may want to take the structure out for work. I am using old 12 volt wall warts for lighting power.
do you run the icandescents at a slightly lower voltage so that they’re not so white?
Dave is spot on. I also use 12 volt incandescent bulbs in my structures, much more realistic looking. I operate my 12 volt bulbs (GOW) at 8½ volts not only for longer life but at reduced voltage they look more realistic.
I go with card stock (chipboard) for room dividers and flooring in multiple floor structures. The chipboard I buy is brown so painting isn’t normally needed for flooring. I also paint the interior walls with a light color. I paint all the ceilings white to reflect the light down. I use small basswood square strips in corners to prevent light leaks.
For easier maintenance down the road I use micro connectors between floors so the structures can be disassembled without damage. After redoing several structures to update the lighting making them easy to get into during construction became very apparent.
I glue the bulbs to the ceilings and use 36AWG bare wire to the connectors on each story attaching them with glue.
Since I got into the Arduino thing I’m going with multiple bulb lighting in my structures driven with Random Lighting Controllers. That requires room dividers with light leak prevention. I wire the bulbs with 36-30 AWG wiring to male micro connectors usin
Running 12 volt lamps on about 9 volts looks fine. To be honest with you, I would have to get out the volt meter to check what I am running on the layout right now. I am using a wall wart for power, I cannot remember whether it is a 9 volt wall wart or a 12 volt wall wart.
To make up for the loss through the Arduino driver I run 9.3 to the Arduino and the output to the bulbs is 8½ volts. Years ago I dinked around with the voltage and decided that 8½ look the best to me.
I tried to run my 1½ volt micro bulbs at 75% and they were too dim for headlights. I ended up using 1.4 volts for headhights.
I’ve tried LEDs many times but they just don’t cut the mustard compared to incandescents for me. I recently went looking for more 1mm 1½ volt micro bulbs and I’ve only found one seller on eBay and the price has more than doubled so I guess I’m stuck. My stock is under 50 right now, I’ll just have to bite the bullet at 40¢ each. The last time I bought 100 they cost $17.
Running the 12 volt bulbs at about 75% I’ve haven’t lost a bulb in 20 years. The 1½ volt micro bulbs at 1.4 volts or about 93% occasionally burn out. I replaced three last year out of about 250 two were in the same vehicle so maybe a different problem, a VW minivan.
Mel
My two cents:
If the structure is at eye level with a visible interior, I suggest using LEDs in the roof where they can’t be seen to provide the candle power to make the interior visible. Then run some incandescent lights where they are visible to the viewer to provide the ambience of the incandescent without having to use a ton of them to provide the bright light to see the interior.
This warehouse uses the technique I described above. The strong light on the man is from a hidden LED. The interior lampshade and the two lights above the loading dock (hidden from view) are incandescent.
Have fun,
Guy
I build crude interiors with foam board and cover them with printed wall and floor textures. This separates the interior and gives me an opportunity to light individual rooms. I paint the exterior walls and line those with printed cardstock, too.
Since I model the late transition era, I prefer incandescent bulbs. I use 16 volt bulbs running at 12 volts for a more pleasing look and longer bulb life.
I use Venetian blinds and window shades where appropriate. Take a look at the structure to determine if the size of each window needs simple shades or a more detailed interior. Don’t waste time creating an interior scene if it can’t be seen because the windows are too small.
Lighting a structure is something I hope to explore eventually. This thread gave me reason to explore further. No question that putting in lights creates more realism when done properly.
i’ve become curious about structure lighting because of what my layout looks like at night with lighted passenger cars when I happen to forget to turn it off.
i’ve asked about lighting a single structure, what about multiple structures or the relationship between structures? should they all be lit the same(?). I know Mel has a random lighting generator.
If I had a lot of bulbs and infrastructure to support them already, I might consder bulbs more seriously. However, I don’t and there are simply too many advantages to LEDs and drawbacks to lamps that except for certain special circumstances I use nothing but LEDs.
The biggest reason not to put bulbs in structures is heat, which weakens glue, dries out wood, and distorts plastics. As long as you run bulbs, the first thing you have to deal with is dissipate heat. I’d rather spend the time on adding to my lighting and avoiding risk to structures I put a lot of effort into.
How bright? Like in the real world, variety is the rule rather than standardization. In places where all lights wiould look the same, do it, like on street lighting along a street. In most places, like building vs building, you should see substantial differences in brightness. Judiciously placed resistors are a great help with this.
White or yellow? Depends on the effect you desire. Don’t forget to include blueish light if you want to simulate flourescents. LEDs toward the yellowish part of the spectrum are good for what they look like, the older tungsten lamp bulbs. LEDs that are basically white would tend to be more modern lighting, an arc lamp or welding.
I make an effort to avoid evenly lighting all complex, larger structures. They rarely are in real life, so wouldn’t expect them to be on the layout. Just takes a little thought on wiring in an etxra resistor or 2 here and there. This is again a far simpler and less hardware intensive than with bulbs. Same thing with different floors. Unless there is an obvious reason why all lighting should be the the same, let randomness guide you.
If the rear of the buiklding is visible, consider lighting it. Alleys can be dark so 1:1 people often put a security light back there.
As for connectors, the small gray wirenuts are your friends IMO and make things easy to modify.
Here’s an example that captures many of those subtl
When visitors drop by the first thing they comment about is the animation on my layout, action stuff. I normally dim the room lighting to show off my lighting. I have a pair of 23 Watt 4100°K LED floods side by side for moonlight effect that really works for my lighting. I currently have 8 houses running off Arduino Random Lighting Controllers and a pair of crossing gates that are eye catching. All of my structures are illuminated and the street lights really help. 90+ vehicles with headlights and taillights really stand out too.
The only comments on my trains are usually the locomotive sound. Most want to see my turntable in action, again animation is what seems to catch everyone’s eye.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Mike
First your lighting looks great.
Using GOW bulbs is just my preference; I don’t have anything against using LEDs except that I just happen to like incandescent lighting better for my era of the early to mid 50s. Another reason is I’ve used GOW bulbs since the early 50s (67 years) and I’m kinda stuck using them. I do use LEDs for fluorescent lighting and in my passenger cars for their low current. All of my signaling has LEDs.
I’ve been using incandescent grain of wheat bulb for well over 50 years and never had any problems with heat dissipation that I’m aware of, plastic or wood. I’ve always operated my bulbs at reduced voltage, roughly around 70% to 80% of rated voltage. Dimmer just looks better to me. I don’t know if the reduced voltage helps with the heat, it does lower the current a bit which helps the power supply.
I don’t mind having to provide the current needed for my incandescent lighting, been doing it that way far to long to change.
When I made the decision to go with the Arduino Random Lighting Controllers I admit I wasn’t happy
Yes, running incandescent bulbs at lower-than-rated voltage will reduce the heat they give off. I’ve never had a heat problem with my bulbs.
I also use LEDs where appropriate. I use the yellow-glow ones for locomotive headlights. I used a small flat panel LED for a porch light.