Recomend any good books for lighting buildings?

[Anonymous]

I'm working in O-scale and starting my first of many soon to be interiors. Building and detailing interiors is no problem, however it will be wasted if there are no lights inside for people to see the work i've done. Does someone make a good book to teach a novice on how to install lighting inside of buildings? Thanks Bill

[chutton01]

Not sure if there are any books specifically about lighting building interiors, but there have been many articles in hardcopy about this (often dealing with specific aspects about lighting - it really isn't that broad a subject, but allows for lots of little tidbits and tricks for more realism).

Here is a usenet (via google groups) thread concerning interior model building lighting (hope it works correctly):
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.models.railroad/browse_frm/thread/fe66ec8d6d8950f2/eae2d8c986e7586f?q=lighting+model&_done=%2Fgroup%2Frec.models.railroad%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dlighting+model%26start%3D30%26&_doneTitle=Back+to+Search&&d#eae2d8c986e7586f

Basically the hints I usually see are:
Paint the interior walls black (and then paint over them the interior color) to prevent light leakage (also: seal any poor corner joints with putty or styrene or equivalent first).
Put lights on top of room (either on styrene strip or wood 'rafters', or sheet ceilings) shining down, perferably above the window line (or recessed in ceiling box if floor to ceiling store windows).
If you must run from the ground up, try and position the bulb so its glare is not directly visible through the building's window.
Put a (alumimun) foil reflector around light to increase the amount of light in the direction you want it.
View blocks of painted and strut-reinforced cardboard, styrene, etc. Doing this right means you may need only one or two bulbs per building
Use copper strip wiring whenever possible (since it can be laid on the walls and painted over, and it's easy and neat to work with).
LEDs make good, cool yellow looking room lighting. OTOH, Christmas tree bulbs are not all that great for interior lighting (much debate on this one).
For residental buildings: blue LEDS behind a square piece frosted translucent plastic to mimic TVs (even modern era,wide screen plasma TVs cast a bluish light through the windows)
Run incandescent lighting on a somewhat lower voltage to lengthen it's lifespan (and cause you usually don't need all that glare anyway).

There is some debate over how you show run buses (electrical feeds) for these building lights (it is preferred to run them off a seperate power supply, since lighting 20 buildings will become a big energy sink), but I guess that applies to any accessories power sink...

[SPFan]

Bill,
I'm detailing some of the new Lionelville buildings right now. I'm using 12V grain of wheat bulbs. You could also use grain of rice bulbs which are about 1/3 the diameter. Since the interiors are detailed with furniture, wallpaper, doors, etc I elected to place the lamps in positions they might be found in the prototype. That is I placed two in table lamps ond one in the ceiling . You can get a complete room of O scale furniture for about $1.80 that includes table lamps. The wires are fed through holes drilled in the lamp, then table or dresser, and finally through the floor. Incandescent lamps offer an advantage in that you can reduce the voltage and they will produce an orange glow which is more lifelike than a white LED. You can always use white LEDs if you want bright light.

Pete