Best way to light over 100 + buildings ?

[cruikshank]

When we took over our club layout we inherited it over 100 buildings, mostly houses, but also businesses, coal breakers, stations etc. Most we handmade from styrene or laser cut Balsa I guess.  In one of our next steps we would like to light them so we can show nighttime running.  A couple of questions. What is the best way to light so many buildings?  I'm thinking LED's over incandescents. Should we run a seperate lighting bus? Also I believe unless we paint the interior walls black, or line them with foil or something, the walls will glow, rather than having the interiors light up. Whats the best way to avoid this?  Any other hints or kinks you can offer would be appreciated. Along this same line we would also like to add street lamps.  We are talking 1920's so probably gooseneck streetlights  Thanks in advance, Dave North Schuylkill Hi-railers  Frackville, PA

[Roger Bielen]

I don't have near the number of lights your planning but I came across a transformer that was a good buy and couldn't pass up.  I had bought an industrial control type transformer, open frame, from one of the electronic surplus/supply houses.  Sorry but I don't recall which one.  The trans is 25 Amp and 12.6 volts.  I have it fused for 15 Amp.  I have a 14 ga. lighting buss run around my layout.  The bulbs I use are 14v, 18v and 24v depending on the brightness I want.  I've also made some constant, reduced voltage boards for using LED's and signs/lights that came with battery packs.

For houses that "glow" I paint the interiors with flat black paint.

I've made street lamps using 7/32" brass tube, brass rod and the lamps with shades that Walthers has.  I bend the rod to the shape desired for the arm, solder it to the tube, drill a hole at the base of the rod for the wire to get inside the rod and then paint.  I then super glue the lamp on the end of the arm and the wire along the arm and thread it into the tube and out the top.  I splacie no enough wire to go down through the tube and under then under the layout  and then thread it back down through the tube.  I plug the top and wire hole with wood putty, touch up the paint and install.  On average it takes about an hour per lamp.  If making quantities the time can be cut considerably using jigs.

[phillyreading]

Far as power consumtion goes LED's are better than incandescents, but you may have a cost factor using 100 or more LED lights, LED's are more expensive to buy than incandescent and sometimes up to three times the price! If you have room for it two transformers would probally be better than one for that many lights.

I have 14 to 16 incandescent lights on a 13.8 volt DC regulated power supply, with LED's you could have 25.

Lee F.

[chuck]

Strings of LED based Christmas lights were under $10 this past holiday season and I believe they were 50-60 count strings.  They have zero heat output and are very efficient.  You might want to measure the distance between "bulbs" on one of these strings and see if this works out for you.  They also have the advantage of working right off of 110 and most could be strung in series up to three lengths.

Re black paint vrs tin foil shielding.  In modeling fantasy spacecraft, the tin foil almost always did a better job of a) blocking light from where we didn't want it to go, b) acting as a reflector so that more light actually did make it out of the intended openings.  Paint was easier to apply but wasn't always as effective at blocking light.

[dwiemer]

Have some fun and make it more interesting by "blocking" a room or two in some houses. You simply build some walls with cardboard or styrene so light only comes from ie: the living room, or a bed room. One idea that also helps is to block voltages to different buildings (using incad. lights), you can have them hooked up to a dimmer switch to allow for different effects.
Dennis

[kpolak]

http://www.allelectronics.com/ has bulk LED's for your buildings.  These are not the $5 screw base LED's, but basic LED's with 2-wires, that need to be connected to a resistor, but can be purchased very inexpensively.

http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz is a site to help you calculate and select resistors to use with your LED set-up, both with a single LED and LED's in series/parallel.

If you select the wrong resistor(s) you will start burning out your LED's.

Kurt

 

[lionelsoni]

Kurt, I just asked that site to design me a circuit for 100 3-volt, 20-milliampere LEDs.  It made 25 series strings, each with 4 LEDs and a 1-ohm ballast resistor.  Not good.  It should be noted also that they assume DC power.

I recommend going with AC and wiring pairs of LEDs in antiparallel, then in series to perhaps half the peak voltage, with a suitable ballast resistor for each series string.  I would avoid regular white LEDs and go with ones like those sold by Richmond Controls as "golden white", to look more like the color of incandescent lamps:  http://www.richmondcontrols.com/

LEDs and their ballast resistors do put out heat; but, properly designed, they can be cooler than incandescents.

[Brutus]

I've been wondering how fiber optics would work out....  I found this place online after about 3 seconds of searching....

http://www.fiberopticproducts.com/Kits.htm