I used to light all my structures and my layout would look a Christmas tree…however, I find it a lot of extra wiring work and to be frank, it only make it that little more realistic but in fact, shows all the emptiness of the structures up close…
I am in the planning stage for my second layout and want to do things properly this time, so do you light all your structures? Would you light all your structures if you have a chance to do it all over again?
Funny enough, I just lighted all my passengers trains! LOL
Most of my structures are lighted on my layout except for the school, bank and dry goods store because they would normally be closed at night. As for the empty building problem. I’ve lined all of those that are lighted with white typing paper. The only one I didn’t do this to was the fire station because theres a couple of old timers playing checkers just inside the door. My lighting system is also on its own power supply so that it doesn’t interfere with my locos. The thing about it is, I hardly ever turn them on unless I’m showing my layout to an occasional visitor…
As for lighted passenger cars. They’re really neat looking and all, but I’m personally not into them because I’ve had so much trouble with them in the past.
I havent lighted all my structures just ones that I think should be lighted. I do have a tendency to light the outside of buildings. I run a layout during dusk time that I can even turn to night time so I found this helpful. Certain details like my Soda Machines I light up also. I find any building can be lit if you want just ad an on off toggle. True the toggle is another added cost but well worth it.
Keep in mind at night not all rooms would have lights on. If you place one bulb in the middle of a structure, all windows will show lights and the building will appear to be fully occupied. One way to “turn off” the lights in some windows is to cover them from the inside with black electrical tape, this prevents light from showing through. Also you can frost the insides of windows where you don’t have any interior details by covering them with “magic” transparent tape.
My layout runs on a 24-hour timetable, so I will be grouping building lights on separately controlled (by toggle switch) circuits. Some buildings and all outdoor (street and railroad yard illumination) lights will be lit all night. Storefronts will be lit in the early evening, dark thereafter. Dwellings will all be dark by midnight (not much night life!) but many will be illuminated again before dawn (it’s a long commute to jobs that require an 0800 show time.) If I get it right, it should be possible for a visitor to guesstimate the approximate time by taking note of which lights are on.
I’m not there yet, but I plan to light a lot of my buildings. Like others, I’m planning multiple “lighting busses” with toggle switches so I can control them separately. I’ve made sure that all my structures are sprayed black inside to reduce the glowing-building effect from interior lights, once I put them in. I’ve got a couple of Model Power buildings that came with some interior detailing, and I’ve added some to others.
Walthers has a few of their street lights on sale this month. Since the outsides of the buildings are better detailed than the insides, I’m planning to order a few of these to light my streets at night.
i plan to light most of my bulidings and plan to put street lamps/lights soda macheins ect. out side of the buildings. also light up businesses singhs… considering how small my layout is going to be thats not that much. once i get it all up i’ll post some pics. and see how you guys like it.
Right now I run two lighting busses that are DCC controlled (but do not use track power). The first is a simple on/off which is for all exterior lighting (i.e. buiildings, yard lights, street lights etc…). The second is a variable voltage which goes to interior lights. This allows me to change the brightness. Most, not all, buildings get one interior lightbulb. A couple of exceptions are the diesel shop, which got 6 and the mining structure which got 3. They are larger buildings. LIke others here I won’t put bulbs in commercial businesses that aren’t going to be open at night.
Only some of mine are lighted at this time, I am using multiple controls (read toggles) to control different parts of the layout lighting. The ones I have lighted now are ones that I did put some interior detail in, so at least you see something. More will get lighting as time goes on. A model railroad is never really done you know !
Lighting all structures is unrealistic because not all structures are occupied at night. The ones that are occupied will rarely be fully lit, so only some of the the rooms should be lit. Also, lighting would vary depending on the time of night. When everyone is sleeping, most structures would be dark on the inside. I have very little internal lighting at this time because I have bigger fish to fry and up to now have not done night operations. The structures I intend to light in the future have lift off roofs to make retro fitting of lights easier. The larger structures will be wired to allow for lighting different combinations of rooms depending on the time of night.
I think I know what to do now…I think I would probably concentrate a bit more on exterior lighting especially around the intermodal terminal, parking lots and yards and limited interior ones with some of your suggestions for the depots and motels etc…just in case I want to do a ‘night’ run!
I was going to use decoders to control the lighting but I end up just using toggles, a lot cheaper and quicker! But with all the lights on at the same time, it can draw some currents though…I used to connect the twin coil switches to the same power supply and it would trip the overload frequently…but I separated them, all fixed!
I started using wall bricks to power my lights, have a mess of them with multiple outputs, used to be available at The Shack, I route them through a toggle, each brick has its own toggle, so I end up with many individual circuits, which I prefer, I can turn on different sections of lighting as I wish.
For N scale building, most small ones are ok, you can tell the difference anyway but now I am building a Union Station and I thought it would have some sort of interior inside but NOTHING at all! Not even a complete floor! So if I am going to light it up, it’s a lot of work tring to do something about the interior! It’s glass around including almost all skylights!
I enjoy seeing the effect on others’ layouts, but I am not going to do it for my own. Too much work, and I know for a fact that I would operate them less than 1% of the time. I am busy enough running my entirely manual layout, so I need to see what I am doing, and that means interior lighting would be close to superfluous.
Building the interior is half the fun for me. I bet if you add interior to your station it would really make it come to life. I’m an HO person so I couldn’t imagine building it in N scale.
