General Discussion (Model Railroader)

  Help! Please endure a very basic question from a non-electrician. In the past here when I searched for simple techniques to light building interiors  I could find lots of good info (which I failed to print or save). In the new format I have searched frequently without success to find good tips on basic techniques to light the interior of my buildings. I have an HO layout underway powered at the moment by only a Digitrax Zephyr. I want to simply illuminate some building interiors and passenger platforms beneath Union Station.  I need to know power source, ?outlet adapter?, can I use a busse line, can I use my track power busse line, how to connect bulbs to power line?? Again forgive the novice question. Please advise or direct me to the right forum location. Thanks very much.

 An old DC transformer is ideal for this.

David B

 A strand of Christmas bulbs works well for me.

Start with the lamps.  Most common are 12 volt incandescent lamps.  Six volt lamps are made as well as 1.5 volt ones.  Stick with the 6 or 12 volt ones, the 1.5 volt jobs are difficult to power and not very bright.  Now knowing what voltage your lamps need, (cause you have bought some) look for a power supply.  Incandescents run fine on AC or DC.  You can use an old train power pack, a transformer pulled out of old electronics stuff, or a wall wart of the proper voltage for your lamps. or a battery charger.  If you are unsure of your electronicing skills, you probably want to stick with an assembled and tested supply rather than rolling your own from a bare transformer.

  Putting lamps in structures.  First you want to seal any light leaks around the joints with tape, and paint the interior to prevent the walls from glowing in the dark.  The doll house people carry conductiive copper sticky tape which is very convenient.  It carries juice up to a ceiling mounted lamp with filling the building interior with a rats nest of wire.  You can mount the bulbs by tack soldering their leads to the copper tape.

   All the lamps want to be wired in parallel.  Track power will illuminate the bulbs, but it means the structure lights go out when you stop the train.  Better is to run a separate lighting buss powered all the time by your lighting power supply.

 I power most of my building lights with a 9v wall wart.  By using 12 volt bulbs, I get a nice yellowish glow (perfect for 1925) and will probably never have to replace a lamp.  I use a DC power bus to accomplish this and then run feeders to the buildings for the power. 

I use those minilamps that come in strings of 150 for Christmas tree use - the week after Christmas you can get them at a significant discount and they're handy for anyplace where you can hide the compressed gas cylinder sized (in HO) lamp.  They come with push-in sockets, so replacing one is a snap.  Individual lamps are rated 2.5V  and they're actually wired in strings of 50 across the 120VAC power plug.

For power, I use a 12.6V center-tapped transformer from Radio Shock (misspell deliberate - referring to most of their prices) which gives me two sets of 6.3VAC circuits, each rated at the full output wattage of the transformer.  Four lamps in series burn with a nice yellowish 'typical residential light' glow.  Three give whiter light for businesses and industries, and still run well below the rated voltage (which will extend the life of the individual lamps.)

Actually, by varying the number of lamps in the series string, you can use almost anything for power.  Three lamps across the output of a five-volt wall wart, four across the charger for a six volt anything, seven across the AC output of a toy train power pack, eight to ten for the charger of an 18V cordless drill, they will all work.  I have a motley collection of such junk (my sister is addicted to yard sales and collected them for me) that I will be using to light up the various population centers of my HOj scale double garage filler.

Not the only possible solution, but one that works for me.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

Lots of good advice here.  I've successfully used this as a power supply for lighting: 

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/8238

I install Miniatronics 14v bulbs during structure construction, usually by feeding the bulb through some 1/8" styrene tubing and attaching it to the inside of the building where appropriate.  The feeders from the bulb then get attached to the power buss under the layout.  By using the 12v setting on the power supply, there's little chance of blowing a bulb and I'm happy with the illumination effect.  Pay attention to comments about blocking light where you don't want it to show, either by painting inside walls black or using black construction paper to create "walls" between rooms.   You rarely see an entire building lit up at night.   

    Thanks to each of you for some very useful advice. This gives me some great alternatives to get started. I really appreciate your time and effort! Should be fun!

 I use an AT computer power supply to power my structure lights. Most of the lights are 6 volt mini bulbs that I cut from 20 light strands. I connect these to the power supply's 12 volt circuit (actually 10.57 on this one) Two bulbs give a good white light for a business or work area while three give a good yellowish glow for a residence. For outside lighting where a cluster of bulbs wouldn't be practical I use one 6 volt bulb on the power supply's 5 volt circuit. Several of my older structures are also on this circuit with pairs of 3 volt bulbs. These have been burning for over ten years now.

jblackwelljr:

 

Lots of good advice here.  I've successfully used this as a power supply for lighting: 

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/8238

I install Miniatronics 14v bulbs during structure construction, usually by feeding the bulb through some 1/8" styrene tubing and attaching it to the inside of the building where appropriate.  The feeders from the bulb then get attached to the power buss under the layout.  By using the 12v setting on the power supply, there's little chance of blowing a bulb and I'm happy with the illumination effect.  Pay attention to comments about blocking light where you don't want it to show, either by painting inside walls black or using black construction paper to create "walls" between rooms.   You rarely see an entire building lit up at night.   

I use "conduit" to hide my wiring as well (nothing like looking into a building and have a big set of wires running through the middle of it). I use drinking straws, CA'ed to a corner inside the building. Once dried, I simply paint it black to match the interior color.

I've standardized on 16-volt bulbs.  That's the size in the Walthers Cornerstone street lights, and Miniatronics makes 16-volt grain-of-wheat bulbs that I use for hanging lights in my subway stations and other structures.  I run these at 10-12 volts, which gives a warm but not overpowering glow.  Since all the bulbs are the same voltage, I can use the same power supply to drive them all.

I tried 1.5 volt bulbs, which came with resistors.  I found that the extra wiring was a real pain, especially in tight places, so I replaced them with 16-volt after they burned out.

Each of these small bulbs, by the way, will use 30-40 milliamps of current.  It's not much, but it adds up once you've started to put a lot of them together.  10 street lights is going to be 3 or 4 tenths of an amp, and my roundhouse alone is more than that.  So, you need to look at the rating of the power supply you're using to drive them.  If you're using a wall-wart, you may find it only has 500 milliamps (1/2 amp) available.

That's also the reason you do NOT want to run your structure lights off your DCC system.  I think a Zephyr is only 2 1/2 amps, so the lighting needs of even a modest layout would be a significant fraction of its total available output.  Save the DCC power for your trains, and provide a separate source for structure lighting.

I've divided my lighting into separate circuits, although right now they're all coming from a common source.  I've got two circuits for buildings, one for street lights, one for lights in the rail yards, etc.  This "divide and conquer" philosophy gives me individual control of different items, and also helps when troubleshooting problems later on.

Thanks this really helps. So here is what I picture: a wall wart 9 or 12 volt--I cut off the end and strip the end of each wire. These I guess would hook to a terminal strip. The short wires from each bulb have to get to the terminal strip somehow. Is this about right?? How do you make the connections, what type of terminal strip? How do you get length from the wires on the bulbs to reach where they need to go? Do you use a bus line off the terminal strip? I know all this reveals my ignorance on the topic but had to ask. I am trying to envision this setup. Thanks again!

 I just run 2 wires from one end of the layout to the other. These wires are 14 gauge. From these wires I run 22 guage feeder wires to the point under the layout that corresponds to a structure location. I've already drilled a hole from the topside of the layout so I simply feed the wires up through the hole and secure them with a piece of tape. When I go back up top I can attach the bulbs wires to the feeder wires. One of my structures has 10 bulbs in it.

 Here are a bunch of links. Store them in your Favorites folder. Every so often I export my Favorites folder to a directory in my PC in case I inadvertently delete the Favorites. I have never done that but some people have. I have about a thousand URLs in my favorites folder under different categories.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&q=model+railroad+structure+lighting&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web

Rich

 Thanks again! I appreciate your help.