Hello all,
I have been working on my 6 stall Heljan Roundhouse.
I have to finish the roof but thought about lighting, so I put some lights in and I am undecided so I thought I would ask for your opinion.
These lights are Seed lights for crafts and hobbies, they consist of 20 bulbs.
So what do you think?
Several years ago I built one just like it for our club layout. Once it was lit with several lights it became quite an attraction at our open house events. Our lights were a bit dimmer, but it was easy for visitors to see inside and they could pick out the various shop tools and scenes of engines being worked on. Eventually, we added a welder which lit up the shop when work was being done. Also we dirtied up the windows with a light spray of dullcoat. This helped to soften the light a bit. Once it is located on the layout, I think you will see how much the lights add to the overall effect for both day and night scenes.
Southern4449, they may be a tad bright, but overall I like the effect. Not sure what voltage those lights run off of, you may have to worry a bit about the heat. You may be able to lower the voltage a little and still get a great effect. Of course now the interior is begging for details!
On my first HO layout, I built a modern era diesel shop from a kit. The lighting was was too bright for using grain of wheat bulbs at 12v so I added one more to each of the two strings. That helped, but didn’t really look convincing. I then painted the bulbs with a thinned yellow paint and got the desired effect. Later on, when I became employed with a lighting fixture company, I became aware of mercury vapor lighting used in most high ceiling plants (see Costco). So I replaced the lamps with new and removed the extra ones. I then painted them with thinned blue lacquer. VOILA!!! Mercury Vapor lighting! What a differance. In other words, the type and color lighting has a lot to do with the application.
I haven’t visited that many roundhouses but those I did were built in the early part of the Century, used common incandescent lamps, and were ‘dingy’ inside. except in the pits where work was done. Mercury Vapor came along later - in time for the more modern Diesel fascilities.
I have a 9 stall Heljan roundhouse and a 5 stall craftsman roundhouse from South River. Since the Heljan roundhouse as little interior detail, I position it so the doors are facing away from the aisle and just put a few lights inside. The 5 stall round house has interior detail plus inspection pits so I positioned it so you can look inside and I put a grain of wheat bulb over each stall. It made a big difference.
I went to a local MRR club’s open house recently and they had both a roundhouse and a diesel engine house. The roundhouse was dark save for a welder’s torch (an LED hooked up to a random flashing circuit). The engine house had the most creative light source - a linear bulb taken from a computer scanner was used!
