It will create a scene with Lightning & Thunder. I am working on the design and would like to hear some idea you may have.
Here was what I have already. The area is about 4’ x 1.5’ It is at the back of the layout facing you.
On a piece of Plastic 3/32" thick I have put the lightning bolt with White Glue and have primed over the sheet. I am now going to use an Air Brush to layer the storm sky color.
Hear is where I could use some advice. My plan now is to use a strobe in back of the plastic with a Push Button on my panel. When I hit the button the lightning would flash.
The sound will be a different subject but I already have a Sub Woffer ready to go.
Good luck using plastic as a light tube to create lighting, I give that a shot about 10 years ago and gave up. There is a club that brings their modular layout to the Kern County yearly train show that has an excellent “storm module”. They use a mask in front of an xenon strobe that looks terrific. They also have a twister that comes down out of a nicely painted dark layered storm cloud, the twister is spinning slowly as it descends and accompanied by wonderful sound effects.
I am not sure what you mean buy a light tube. Picture clear plastic with a light source behind it. Now grey out everything except the bolt of lightning. The only thing you will see is the lightning.
I was after a slightly different effect. I tried to use Acrylic plastic in thin jagged strips that weren’t obvious by eye until illuminated in the open not behind a sheet of plastic, it didn’t work. I couldn’t concentrate enough light through the sliver of Acrylic to resemble lightning.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
Unless you want the strobe effect of repeated flashes at an exact interval you don’t need a strobe light. If you plan on manually pushing a momentary switch button for ever flash any incandescent light will do . If you need to control light spill there is black tin foil designed for use with theatrical lighting to block unwanted stray light.
Instead of using a button, I would buy a light which is sensitive to sound. The sound waves activate the light so that the lightning flashes with the sound of thunder. You can find lights like these in autoparts stores or musical instruments/DJ stores.
For sound effects check out Thunderstorm Sounds, a CD you might be interested in using. This is the last copy of it:
I gave up on that project a long time a go. I did try several things and learned a lot doing it. The thing that worked the best for me was multiple clear and blue fiber strands of different lengths. The problem was always the same, not enough light for what I wanted.
I use a lot of fiber optics on my layout for special effects driven mostly by super bright LEDs. They work great for flickering fire effects and road flares. I tried red fiber strands for taillights but clear with red die works much better. With the new super bright RGB LEDs almost anything is possible using fiber strands.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
Why model the bolt of lightning? It’s going to be the same shape and in the same spot every time it flashes. I think I’d eventually get tired of something like that. Why not just have a hidden light source flash to simulate a nearby, but unseen, lightning strike.
