Can you give me the time of day?

[FJ and G]

Perhaps some of you older farts recall an episode of Twilight Zone where people froze in place. Reminds me of the people on our layouts (except for the animated figures).

Since our layouts are frozen in time, with an unchanging backdrop and very little movement except for the trains and some accessories, time of day becomes quite important.

Most layouts I see model daytime, between about 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with overhead lighting and normal blue skies and white puffy clouds.

However, there are other times of day that are equally modelable. Let's examine these a bit more.

1. Sunrise/sunset: would require a bit more painting skills for the backdrop and angular lighting would be desirable.

2. 1 hour after sunrise or before sunset: very few have modeled this time of day but, IMO, it is equally as spectacular as sunrise/sunset. Angular lighting comes into play. The sky is a tourquis or azure, clouds are becoming tinged with color but still maintain their bright white appearance. These are my favorite types of day for modeling.

3. Night: usually, modelers simply turn off the lights and presto: night! But, IMO this time of the day--or even better, an hour before sunrise/after sunset, could be eminently modelable on a lower shelf layout by painting a dark, hazy (perhaps foggy) backdrop, and turning on some streetlights and house lights. The benefit of this technique is that you wouldn't have to worry about lighting the lower level!!!!!!!!! I've never seen this done before but I don't see why it cannot be done.

4. All times of day/night: some elaborate layouts use 3 separate red, green, blue bulbs each with dimmers to cycle through the day and evening. This has to be the best of all possibilities.

Dave Vergun

[Anonymous]

Never gave the time of day on the layout much thought. Since I have no scenery & very little accessories, the time on my layout is pretty much "right now."

We'll see what we do with the permanent layout in a year or so

Tony

[Anonymous]

An idea just struck me. Some body help me get up!

A few days ago, Dave posted something about translucent backdrops that are backlighted. With careful design, it should be possible to create such a backdrop that let's you move the "sun" through the "sky" & model all times of day.

Orange/red lights illuminate the tops of clouds at sunrise & sunset. You'd have to find a way to move the actual lighting so that shadows on the layout would fall in the correct directions.

Gee, this would probably end up costing more than the benchwork, trackwork, & scenery combined.

Tony

[FJ and G]

Tony,

I have an 18 inch diameter moon disc light I purchased from HD that hangs over my pool table. With this light (flourescent), you could have a moon rise and moon set. Would just need to have a track for it and the cord could be on a pulley device. The moon could either just pop up and then down or could move horizontally across the layout.

Even better would be for it to move up and across in a sort of bell-curved pathway. Same techqique could go for the sun by the bulbs would need to be incandescent.

It's fun to think out of the box sometimes and pu***he envelop!

[Anonymous]

I thought we were making model railroads....Now we are making models of weather. How about a little tornado...or maybe an earthquake? Why just settle for a mobile sun or moon? Odd-d

[Anonymous]

Strange correlation,
I saw the movie the day after tomorrow, last night. when I read the first post I and the last post they both go with the movie.

Night scene
I wouldn't mind a night scene, paint a black backdrop, some planets and stars, nice glowing moon, Midnight express chugging along the rails. Sounds like a good idea, would probably do midnight to early morning.

Angelo

[dougdagrump]

Odd-d, Don't laugh, the last GATS event I went to there was a HO layout that had a big storm cloud over part of it. A realliy nasty looking thing with litening flashes and what not then every so often here comes a tornado dropping down for a minute and dancing around the buildings and track then back uo into the cloud.
Angelo, You wouldn't need a black backdrop. You can get all kinds of stuff that supposedly will glow in the dark after being exposed to light. I've seen moons, stars and all kinds of other stuff.

[dougdagrump]

Dave, This sounds like a good excuse for a road trip to Caesar's Palace in Vegas. Maybe they would show you how they do it there.[(-D]

[Roger Bielen]

In addition to my overhead lighting I have two three bulb sets of floods (freebies) at one end of my room. With the use of dimmers for my lights I can simulate a sunrise/sunset with these lights being at an angle, especially with the color shift of the lights to a more yellow light as they dim.

[Anonymous]

I have dimmers in my train room and my buildings, trains and accessories
are lighted. I also have operational street lighting. So I can have all the dif-
ferent times of day! Along with the sound effects of heavy locos and cars
bouncing over switches and crossings, whistles blowing, bells ringing and
the railroad smells of grease, oil and ozone. I can see and hear the slack run-
ning in and out of long trains of freight cars, watch passengers eating in the
diners as they travel by me at track level to far off destinations. Small people
move in and out of various industries, businesses and mill around at the
local passenger station restlessly waiting for the next train, then magically
disappear from the platform prior to the train departing. A dog runs around a
fire plug, a newsboy hawks papers, a train dispatcher leans out the door of
an interlocking tower while his assistant runs up the side stairs. I hear another
dispatcher announcing train movements over a PA system somewhere in
the yard. Geez...Tinplate trains sure are realistic! [:)]

[Anonymous]

i thought one the things to do was to create night time. With all the lights from the engines and other street lights and accesory lighting I thought the trains were made to use in the dark!!

so I added a dimmer switch near the control panel TOO.

Alan

[daan]

In an issue of a german trainmagazine they had a layout with a sheet of see-through light blue "paper" with clouds in it. It is glued to a background of hardboard with all kinds of holes drilled in it. Behind it all there is a light.
When daytime, they use the lights above the layout and cut off the background lightning, the sky seems blue with clouds.
When night they dim the overhead lights and ignite the lights behind the background. Light will now appear through the holes in the hardboard and shine through the transparent blue sky. It looks like stars come out. Even a moon can be made this way, simply use a yellowish paper with a few dark spots.
On my layout it's simply daytime, otherwise I don't see a thing while working on the layout..

[Anonymous]

I was thinking of using that rope lighting. I would use the blue color and string it around the layout. For night time i would turn that up and dim the track lights. Anyone else try this? Tom

[FJ and G]

To see what a sunset and dusk look like on a real layout with computer-generated background animation, you must see this (just scroll down a bit):

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17113