So, I’ve been working on a Bachmann Plasticville signal tower (O), and it is looking like it will be a neat model. However, I want to light the structure and intend to eventually add an interior. My question is this: would such a tower use fluorescent (meaning I’d use pure white LEDs) or incandescent (meaning I’d install warm white LEDs) lighting? Or would the original lighting have since been replaced with LEDs, and would those either be pure or warm white? My model railroad is set right now, but the tower was supposedly built in 1991. What do you think I should use?
If it was built in 1991, it probably would have fluorescent lights. However, railroads began closing / tearing down towers in the 1970s, so given how few are left not sure one really would have been built in 1991?
You should never use fluorescent lighting in a signal tower – it preferentially ruins nighttime vision ‘out’ and makes accommodation much longer if the operator were to need to go out (for example, to hoop up orders).
Lighting should be incandescent, and if halogen, not tremendously Halophane bright. Current replacement would be LED, probably in the ‘warm white’ range rather than daylight, even if the latter offers more accurate color rendition.
CAREFULLY lightproof your walls before you start to build, then test and lightproof the structural seams as you go. You’ll likely be surprised at how even thick paint can allow ‘building shine’ (perhaps not as bad in HO scale as at Three Mile Island, but just as undesirable!)
You would rarely be able to see any overall lighting in a tower. Only a shaded desk lamp over the ‘train sheet’ at the operators desk. Night vision was important to help in seeing defects as the trains passed.
I added an illuminated ‘model board’ to my HO Pennsy tower:
PRR_SG_tower-bay by Edmund, on Flickr
IMG_5316_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
Interlocking Model Board by Edmund, on Flickr
I have fiber optic strands fixed to bicolor LEDs and the colors change as the turnouts are thrown.
Interlocking Model Board red/yellow by Edmund, on Flickr
LED Fiber Optic by Edmund, on Flickr
Have fun! Ed
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Thanks for the suggestions!
wjstix: The reason that it was being built in 1991 is a lengthy story involving a scenic railroad and therefore they wanted to protect the junction in style! 
Woke_Hoagland: Based on what you and gmpullman said, I’m going to use the warm white bulb. Hooping up orders wouldn’t be happening here, but it is still a good point. Lightproofing is a pain (Something that really bugs me is a steamer with the headlight shining out of the stack!), but I think that through double-walls and maybe some aluminum foil I can get that to work.
gmpullman: Wow! I would never have thought of including a lighted panel, but I definitely should! Plus, in O I could easily use miniature LEDs to illuminate it!
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Late model signal towers would have most usually been something like Lionel’s operating accessory with the two figures that run around in circles inside. They typically looked more like a small airport control tower than a brick structure like the Plasticville model.
Yes, and Minot’s Gavin Yard had a spectacular example of one. It’s gone now, but the railroad museum there has a model of the tower and even the original retarder control panels!
Anyway, the reason that I decided to use the Plasticville style of tower (the one I have has regular siding, not brick) was because the Wren Song Railroad, being a tourist/scenic railroad, would want something of an earlier style.
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Keep in mind that the kind of lights on your panel are going to depend on what the panel represents.
When I visited TMI the week after the accident, I was surprised to learn that much or the color-coding of the controls was not ‘green’ for ‘operating normally’ and red for ‘needs attention’… in fact, was not even ‘green for normal position’ and red ‘disabled or closed off’.
Red and green were nominal valve positions, with no regard for whether the valves in question were supposed to be normally on or normally closed. Or – as we found out – whether they were indicating they were closed when they kinda-sorta weren’t.
This is the logic of Ed’s board – it shows switch positions. I presume green = lined straight, red = turnout. I confess that if I were doing such a board I’d use Patenall’s logic (B&O, the guy who gave us CPLs) and set up interlocking logic so the ‘greens’ indicate a full path for a given move, with everything else red.
If your tower is using CTC, there was originally only one color of light, and it marked a block as occupied, not how switches were thrown. More modern boards can show more information, including AEGIS-like summaries of train information (and if you were so inclined, you could probably adapt an old phone screen into such a display, although you might not be able to actually read some of the fine print).
A hump tower has controls for the switches and other controls for the retarders, but I think it’s been a long time since operators watched lights and selected routes manually. By the time foreground attention has shifted from the switch list to a lighted display and then back to controls to set them or confirm setting, the next car has probably been cut and is starting to roll into the bowl…
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A screen–now that’s an idea, as I could control it with Scratch on a Raspberry Pi!
As for the logic… I think I’ll worry about that when I do the tower’s interior (fear the terminology! FEAR IT! )
Excellent idea! 
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Thanks!