Hello all, I am trying to decide if I should put about nine flouresent garage type fixtures on the ceiling of the train room or build facia’s and put lights up behind them. The layout is probably going to be a U shape island style with track on the inside and outside of the U. The room is basically 16’x36’. Phil
PHil:
Just my opinion, of course, but if I had the option I’d choose valence lighting for several reasons. One is that it can be made with more natural light than the garish, bluish-white that fluorescent lights often give. And, with lighting behind valences, the light stays out of your eyes and you can concentrate on the layout (kind of like a museum would do with valence lighting.) Also, using incandesent lights behind a valence, you can do lighting effects if you want, like dimming the yellow “sunlight” and bringing up blue light to simulate night coming to your railroad. Like I said, it’s just me, but I’d go for valence and incandescent lights over fluorescents.
If you can afford the valence lights, go for them. It makes for a nicer looking and better lit room.
I use four CF (Compact Fluorescent) 27 watt (equal to regular 100 watt) daylight bulbs. They give a very natural light that closely approximates daylight. The regular CF bulbs give a yellowish light.
No fluorescents! [xx(] I love being able to dim my around-the-edge lighting for “nighttime” running.
Thanks for the info. It sounds like you have valances and used bulbs behind them. How far apart did you place the bulbs behind the valance. Thanks again, Phil
CFL’s are available that work with dimmers. [2c]
I am building an N scale layout in a room approximately 21’ x 28’. The layout is a around-the-wall linear walk-around design with a central “J” shaped penisula into the center of the room. I’ve used fluorescent valance lighting that follows the front edge of the benchwork per that described by David Barrow in his article on layout lighting found on pages 78-79 in the 2005 issue of Model Railroad Planning. I suggest you check this article for specifics. He uses GE Chroma 50 fluorescent tubes that have a color temperature of 5,000 K and thus come close to the color temperature of sunlight which is 5,600 K. I found the Chroma 50 tubes sold as “Sunlight” fluorescent tubes at Lowe’s. These tubes have a CRI (Color Rendering Index) of 90+ which is very close to that of sunlight which has a CRI of 100. The CRI is an indication of how true colors will look under the illumination compared to how they would look under sunlight. For a complete treatment of lighting and its effect on color see the following GE Lighting Website:
www.gelighting.com/na/business_lighting/education_resources/learn_about_lighting
Go to the list on the left side of the first page of the site and select topic of interest. They have a place in the site where you can interactively illuminate a scene with light of different color teperatures and CRI’s to see how this changes the appearance of thevarious colors in the scene.
Bob
Apparently the GE website address that I gave in my above post no longer takes you directly to the education/resources section of the website. When the above website page comes up, go to the block on the right (Commercial Products) and click on the line Education/Resources. This will get you to the section of the site that you’ll need.
Bob
For my last layout, I used single tube florescent lights behind a valance. The fixtures were space about 6 inches apart. The valance came out as far as the front of the layout (about 24 inches)and was about a foot in depth from the ceiling, and the back side was painted white. The fixtures were close to the front of the valance. This provided an even light throughout the entire layout and almost no shadows. I used Daylight type tubes (whitesh blue light) and also removed the difusers / clear / frosted covers. As for the center part where there was no layout, I used the same type fixtures but they were only used while work on the layout was in progress. When running or showing off the layout, the center lights were turned off. I was very happy with this arrangement, and the lights produced no noticeable heat.