In a few weeks the new train room will be ready for lighting. I'm putting in a drop ceiling with 2 foot square tiles in a grid framework. What are your guys' thoughts on particular types of layout lighting?
Should I go with can lights, track lighting, spotlights or something else I may not have considered?
-G-
Since you've chosen to use a drop in ceiling, I'd vote for the can lights. In my opinion, it looks much cleaner than track lighting or spots.
Don Z.
Research; it's not just for geeks.
I used track lighting, but I already had a ceiling in place.
One thing about track lighting, it's easy to adjust and there's always room for more fixtures.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
For a drop ceiling, either cans or grid mounted fluorescent fixtures are the way to go.
I used CFLs in clamp-on work lights:
Nick
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I used cans in my drop ceiling, wiring each multiple of 6 lights into its own dimmer wall switch. In this way I can turn parts of the layout on and others off, or can dim all or some of the lights as I wish. It has worked very well.
Hal
Lateral-G wrote:In a few weeks the new train room will be ready for lighting. I'm putting in a drop ceiling with 2 foot square tiles in a grid framework. What are your guys' thoughts on particular types of layout lighting?Should I go with can lights, track lighting, spotlights or something else I may not have considered?-G-
Me thinks it is more complicated than what kind of lighting fixture. It is more about where do you need the light? If you have a plan, will yours be an aournd the room, island, multiple level?
If you have not yet sorted the plan, then just get some light in the room to work with. Personally, I use track lighting from Lowes|HD ~13 bucks a lineal ft of track, but that is irrelevant, as now I think a valence is perhaps more important than the actual type of light fixture. With a valence one can use the cheap plastic lamp bases screwed inside the valence. I'm also seeing a need for a mesh/grid/grate so that you cannot actually see the light bulbs.
With a valence, you need to know where your railroad is or is going to be.
Just my 2 cents,
Joe Daddy
If this room will be forever a train room, I'd go with track lights. They are easier to install, and easier to move around and adjust. If it's going to be a room which may have other purposes, put in the cans. They're cleaner and look nicer in the long run.
Either way, though, go with dimmers. It lets you adjust the lighting. You'll find that very valuable when you want that "nighttime" look for your layout, but realize that you still need a bit of light to see the controls.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Thanks for the inputs.
I'm most likely going to go with cans on a dimmer. It is a dedicated train room but when it does come time to move and sell the home cans will be a better sell point.
One little tid-bit about a dimmer control is that you can't use them with most florescent lamps. There are some new special "dim-able" spiral florescent floods available and they are expensive. I have tried a few from Menard's in our kitchen. However, they don't throw nearly as much light as the incandescents do and my wife is after me to change them back.
I have a mix of recessed can lights and track lights over my layout, and I use a mix of incandescent and florescent lamps. They are on four switches so I can get different effects.
I'll follow my earlier comment, by seconding the plan to be sure and have a layout design in mind if using can lights. I did this, and installed the cans above and in the places to be properly over my layout when done, and not over the aisles and unnecessary places.
No worry. The layout is design is 95% finalized.
Here's a plan view of it and the room I'm building.
The yellow circles are proposed locations for the lights. Let me know where you think they may need to be moved to/added or removed. It'll be a few weeks before I'm ready for the ceiling to go in. Right now I'm taping and mudding the drywall. After that it'll be prep for paint then painting followed by finish electrical on the outlets.
The plan is to put cans over the main portions of the layout. The nice thing with the cans too is that if things change they can be moved since can fixtures mount directly to the drop ceiling gridwork.
G,
I'd suggest you take a look at Fugate's valence lighting. Since you have your plan laid out, the valence will not only allow for great lighting, but from what I can see it also greatly enhances the railroad. I am personally wrestling with how I will be incorporating valences and wish I would have not spent the $300 or so bucks on track lighting when all I needed was about 50 bucks worth of plastic sockets.
Just my 2 cents.
Joe
If you're going to use cans I would suggest five more with smaller bulbs in all for more even light.
Add two above the helix (near O and rear), one at J, one opposite corner from J one at B.
It's cheap to add a few cans now.
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net
It depends on the lighting effect that you are seeking. Individual incandescent lights will give you hot spots. The closer they are to the surface, the more pronounced they will be. Some people believe that the resulting strong shadows are more realistic. In a photograph they will resemble a clear sky day. Incandescent lights are yellow/orange in color. Your eye will not notice that. Your camera will. Better digital cameras have a setting to correct it. The color of the light will change as you dim them. Multiple incandescent lights generate a lot of heat. Multiple incandescent fixtures, if not very carefully aimed can give you multiple shadows, which is not even a little realistic.
Flourescent bulbs are usually bluish green, but daylight color bulbs can be purchased. They cost more, but not a lot. Again, a good camera can correct it. They are usually not dimmable, but if cost is no object, there are exceptions. Tube type flourescent shop lights are cheaper than dirt. Fixtures that mount flush in a suspended ceiling are not too expensive. 4 foot tubes give a very even light. In a photograph they will look like an overcast day. Shadows, if present at all, will be very subdued.
Quartz lights are closer to daylight. The color does change as you dim them. They also generate a lot of heat.
I, too, like Fugate's valence lighting system. If it was Mine, I would replace the bulbs with screw in daylight flourescents. That would prevent them from being dimmable, but I don't care about dimming.
I personally use flourescent photographic soft boxes on an overhead track system. Each soft box contains 24 screw in daylight color flourescent bulbs. I can dim them by turning off some of the bulbs. I can also move any of the softboxes anywhere in the room. I would never have spent that kind of money on lighting the train. The 20x21 room used to be the camera room in my photo studio.
So, the short answer is to first decide what lighting effect you are seeking and then install the system that will accomplish it.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Just a comment about dimming lights. Dimmable lighting is held out as the holy grail to which we all should aspire, given enough money and other resources. What is the object of dimming the lights? To simulate the different light levels that are seen at various times of day or night. And how does one get to the various desired light levels with dimming? With lots of experimentation, notes, and playing with the dimmers. Believe me, after being part of a stage light and sound crew, just running the dimmers down slowly and evenly (hopefully mechanically so some poor operator isn't taken away from running his train) is going to produce some realistic lighting and some pretty unrealistic lighting. Our eyes and light sources are both decidedly non-linear. So it's going to take even more experimentation and programming of the dimmers to get the dimming rate to suit your timetable.
I'm suggesting considering "step lighting" as the ultimate, for lack of a better term. Figure out the lighting scenarios you actually want to operate with. Perhaps a moonlit scene, a sunrise or sunset, an overcast day, and a bright sunny day near noon. Maybe even a sunny late afternoon with more shadows, as well. Start with the darkest scenario, and arrange the lights correctly for that scenario. Add more lights (you may even have to subtract some lights) for the next darkest scenario, and so on. Then set up switches to turn the appropriate lights on/off for the desired scenario, one switch per scenario. You might even have an additional switch for construction lights.
Now, nobody has to operate the dimmers, or reset them because they got out of synch with layout time. Will there be a rather sudden change from one scenario to the other? Yes. But is any more jarring than having someone stop what they are doing to operate the dimmers? Will the dimmer operator dim the lights slowly enough to be perceived as a normal change in lighting level?
just my thoughts, your choices
Fred W
In my previous train room I used a combination of fluorescents and tracks - but not at the same time - and it worked well. I had two fluroescent fixtures installed on a finished ceiling by the previous owner, and I used them when I was working on the layout. I had three track lighting circuits (on dimmers) which I used when I was running trains. The track lighting with halogens generated quite a bit of heat although for about six months of the years that could actually be rather welcome. But they also gobbled electricity, main reason for wanting to use them only for running trains or showing off the layout.
When we moved and put the house up for sale, It took me only about two hours to remove the track lighting. About another hour to spackle all the mounting holes. Then primer over all the mounting holes, about 30 minutes spent the next night. Then the following afternoon about three hours to put a coat of fresh paint on the ceiling. Result - nobody the wiser, and my investment in the track system saved for the next train room.