lighting 2nd floor of tower - really bright

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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we’ve wired some red LEDs to a tower to indicate that a yard switch is thrown. we’ve been having problems with the switch being left open and can’t tell the switch position without looking at it.

while the red LEDs are visble, i’d like the lit tower to be impossible not to notice. and i’m also curcious about lighting structures so that they don’t look like open boxes (but not in this tower case)

so i have some relatively bright surface mount white LEDs. am thinking i can cut two pieces of white cardboard to fit inside the tower, one as a floor, the other a ceiling. i can glue 4 white LEDs on the ceiling.

i’m thinking that the white cardboard would be pretty reflective, making that floor of the tower well lit. the windows are slightly frosted and think that will help make them noticeable.

am i correct, or should the interior walls of the tower also be white?

see no point is adding an interior to the tower since it would be dark most of the time. but maybe it could be and there are less bright white lights normally and bright red LEDs to indicate the switch is thrown?

i’m hoping that once i get over the hump of sorting out various electronic issues on the club layout i can work on the interiors of some of the lit structures which are just open boxes. at the very least i’m curious about adding floors and walls. what colors should the be? should windows just be translucent white if there not interiors. but there’s a corner diner that i think could make other eye sores less noticeable.

downtown Cumberland (tower not in this picture)

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I have a few actual signals I use to indicate turnout settings ahead. I find i often check the lights on the signal bridge rather than squinting to actually look at the points at night. For a yard, perhaps a small bi-color dwarf signal would be appropriate. In my subway tunnels, all turnout positions were repeated out to a control panel.

If I can get a good view inside a structure through the windows or an open loading dock door, it gets at least a minimal interior. I’ve got lots of downloads of flooring and walls, including wallpaper and interior doors, so I usually just print a few up and stick them inside while building a kit. I use an inkjet printer and glue the walls on with Aileen’s Tacky Glue because it won’t soak through and mess up the image. I might add a counter made of styrene and painted. Inside a building looking through from the outside, simplicity is usually sufficient. Early on, I built a very nice interior living room for a house, with the wallpaper, rugs, a set of stairs, actual model furniture and all. When I lit it up an placed it at the corner of my layout, I realized that the tiny windows didn’t provide any visibility and I had really wasted my time.

See why it takes me a month to finish a 4-walls-and-a-roof kit?

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at another location we added a microwave antenna tower that has an LED indicating a yard switch position. can’t do that here. we’d like it to be visible from the other side of the layout