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Lighting Your Layout for Dummies

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  • Member since
    May 2004
  • From: The Villages, FL
  • 515 posts
Posted by tcf511 on Sunday, March 30, 2008 8:39 PM

Bob,

Your response is about as close to Lighting for Dummies as I've seen. Thanks. I have two questions. Are you saying that with a terminal strip, I can feed in say 6 pairs of wires from 6 lights and have just two output feeders going to the power buss? If yes, I'm thinking that I could use your recommendation with 16 or 18 guage feeder wires. I solder my track connections, so it is not soldering itself that makes me nervous but on my track buss I use 18 guage feeders and used suitcase clamps to attach them to the 12 guage buss. This has worked fine so far. My second question is...do you have a photo or two of a terminal strip in use that you could share with us? Finally, Phoebe Vet, yes I'm still awake and paying attention. Wink [;)]

 

Tim Fahey

Musconetcong Branch of the Lehigh Valley RR

 

 

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Posted by Seamonster on Sunday, March 30, 2008 8:04 PM

The wires coming from the lamps inside structures are usually very small gauge (thin) wires.  They're not easy to attach to heavier gauge (thick) wires and the bigger the difference in sizes the harder it is to connect them.  Myself, I solder the lamp wires to 2- or 3-position terminal strips screwed to the underside of the plywood and solder the buss wires to the terminal srips.  But then, I've been soldering for about 50 years so it doesn't bother me.  I realise that many people have an aversion to soldering, and I respect that.  So, use terminal strips.  You can use barrier terminal strips which have screws in joined pairs with little walls between the pairs to keep the wires from touching.  Or you can use what's called "European" terminal strips.  They have a horizontal hole to stick the bare end of the wire into and a screw accessed from the top which clamps down on the wire.  Those too come in joined pairs.  Both have advantages and disadvantages.  It will be very hard to find barrier strips that will accomodate #12 wire, and impossible to find European strips for #12 wire.  That's overkill and will be hard to work with.  I'd go for #16 or even #18 wire for your lighting.  When you put the wires under the heads of the screws on barrier strips, make sure to wrap them clockwise or the screw will push the wire out when you tighten it.  What I like about the European terminals is that you buy them in strips and you can cut them to whatever length you want with a razor saw and they have mounting holes all the way along the strip.  You have to buy the barrier strips in the length you want, i.e. the number of screw pairs you want.

To address the issue of voltage and current, the water analogy is an old one and is probably taught to every electrical student.  To keep it very simple, don't worry about what voltage is or what current is.  You're just dealing with light bulbs here.  Every light bulb is rated to put out its full brightness at a certain voltage.  If the voltage is less than the rating, the light output will be reduced and start to turn yellow.  That may be an advantage.  It also makes the bulb last longer.  For instance, I like to operate 12 volt bulbs at 10 volts.  The light output is not so intense and the slightly yellowish colour is more realistic from inside a structure.  Conversely, operate a bulb at greater than its rated voltage and it's life will be reduced and it might even go poof! on you.  Most small lamps are rated at 12 volts and many model railroad lamps are rated at 16 volts because that's what the auxiliary terminals on a power pack put out.  The tiniest little lamps are rated at 1.5 volts and you'd better not go over that!  Just find out what voltage your bulbs are designed to operate at, and that's the voltage you need from your power supply.  If you've got bulbs requiring different voltages, i.e. 12 volt bulbs and 16 volt bulbs, then just get two power supplies, one for 12 volts and one for 16 volts.

As for current, think of it as how much load the lamps are putting on your power supply.  Every power supply has a maximum number of amps or milliamps (1/1000 of an amp) that it can deliver before it breaks down and starts smoking (bad for its health!).  Just find out how many milliamps each bulb consumes and add them all up.  That's how much current your power supply needs to be able to deliver.  To be safe, never ask a power supply to deliver more than 80% of its rated load, i.e. if the power supply is rated for one amp, don't put more than an 800 milliamp load on it.

You should really split up your lighting loads among several power supplies.  Yes, you can get power supplies designed for communications equipment which can deliver 12 volts (usually 13.5 volts to match a vehicle's voltage) at currents high enough to moonlight as a welding machine, but that's asking for trouble if you ever get a short circuit.  I would keep the current requirements on each power supply at around 1 amp or so.  Where to get power supplies?  Well, you can use "wall warts."  That's those little blocks you plug into the wall to power appliances or re-charge your cell phone batteries.  Radio Shack sells a good assortment of them having various voltages and currents up to 1.5 amps.  You can also get them from any electronics supplier.  Plug them into a switched power bar so that you can turn them all off with one switch.  Oh, one last thing.  Incandescent bulbs could care less if their electricity is alternating current (A.C.) or direct current (D.C.).

I hope this has helped you in some way.

 

..... Bob

Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here. (Captain Kirk)

I reject your reality and substitute my own. (Adam Savage)

Resistance is not futile--it is voltage divided by current.

  • Member since
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  • From: Eastern Shore Virginia
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Posted by gandydancer19 on Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:51 PM

I have a little tip for you when trying to read and understand thoes articles that assume that you know what they are talking about, and you don't.  Read the article like a novel.  Don't try to digest the meaning of things on the first or second try.  Just read it through lightly a couple of times.  Read it out loud if you have to.  Sometimes that heps me.  Then on the third time through, try and see if you can figure out what they are talking about.  Sometimes the answers you need first are farther along in the material and when you stop early, you never get there.

And terminal strips are the way to go.  There are a couple of different types and all sorts of different sizes.

Elmer.

The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.

(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.

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Posted by NeO6874 on Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:30 PM

I got the analogy right for once Smile [:)] and i didn't even need google!

 

I'd second Pheobe on the use of terminal strips.  I've not used them in a layout, but I have used them in other small time things (science fair, anyone...) and they made disconnecting and reconnecting wires really easy for when I did other "tests" or needed to use a different setup to make something work.

-Dan

Builder of Bowser steam! Railimages Site

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  • From: Charlotte, NC
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Posted by Phoebe Vet on Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:13 PM
I use terminal strips so that a single light can easily be replaced.

Dave

Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow

  • Member since
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  • From: The Villages, FL
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Posted by tcf511 on Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:08 PM

Thanks for the replies so far. I'm probably not expressing my problem well. On any given module, I'm going to have 15 to 30 "lighting fixtures" of some kind. I know how to set up the buss and connect it from one module to another. I will probably use 12 guage zip wire for this (it may be overkill but that is what I have already for my track buss). I also know how to connect the buss to the power pack. One of my concerns at the moment is how to connect those 15 to 30 lights to the buss. If I had to solder all of those connections individually, I would go nuts. I'm sure that many of you are somehow condensing those sets of feeder wires into fewer connections to the buss through some kind of distribution panel or switch or something. I would love to see some photo examples of how you do that. Also, if you have a panel that has multiple lights connected to it, should the feeder wires from the panel to the buss be a larger guage wire than the individual wires feeding from the bulbs?

One of the great things that I like about this forum, is that there are som many people who are willing to share their knowledge. We all enjoy different phases of the hobby. I hope I'm not coming across as making light of all of you who understand all of this. For me personally, I would rather throw a little money at some type of easy to assemble solution rather than read enough to learn how to build my own circuit boards and power supplies. Thanks again for the responses.

Tim Fahey

Musconetcong Branch of the Lehigh Valley RR

 

 

  • Member since
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Posted by UpNorth on Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:04 PM
 Phoebe Vet wrote:

... like how steep a hill you are trying to move the water up.

Tim !...  TIM !... Are you still with us... I think Tim just left the room.  

  • Member since
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  • From: Charlotte, NC
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Posted by Phoebe Vet on Sunday, March 30, 2008 6:59 PM

NeO6874 is right, but he forgot Watts, which is the total amount of water moved.

I would use a different description of ohms (resistance) like how steep a hill you are trying to move the water up.

Dave

Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow

  • Member since
    January 2006
  • From: Northeast OH
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Posted by NeO6874 on Sunday, March 30, 2008 6:48 PM

Jhonny is getting at the "generic" analogy for electricity.  Usually the basic electricity terms are related to moving water through a pipe or hose.  Though he is a bit mixed up in places. 

voltage = water pressure

amps = "flow" (how much you can get in a set amount of time); sometimes explained as the size of the pipe or hose

ohm = no real equivalent in water analogy.

 

Volts and Amps work together like water pressure moving water out of a hose or a pipe.  If you have a 4" pipe (high amps), you can move a lot more water at lower pressure (lower volts) than a small hose (low amps) at the same pressure (voltage).

Ohms are just a measure of how much resistance is in a given circuit - think of high ohms like a clogged pipe (harder to get water through it).

 

I hope this helps clear things up a bit... 

-Dan

Builder of Bowser steam! Railimages Site

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    February 2008
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Posted by UpNorth on Sunday, March 30, 2008 6:09 PM
 Johnnny_reb wrote:

Think of voltage as the supply of power (water) and amperage as the size of the hose. If your filling a small bucket, a small hose well work but if your fill a swimming pool it would take all day to fill it up. If you have a larger hose (more voltage) you can fill it faster, now if you have more pressure (higher amps) it goes even faster.

I think his eyes just glazed over again. Mine did too..

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Posted by tstage on Sunday, March 30, 2008 11:37 AM

Tim,

I know exactly where you are coming from.  I'm fairly new to all this, too, and I have had to learn electrical things by reading and trial and error.  I've found, unfortunately, that a lot of writers will assume too much, too fast from a novice.  While I'm still trying to digest concept "B", they've already jumped past "C", "D", and "E" and are suddenly talking about "F".

Here's a link to a web site started by a forum member a while back:

http://therustyspike.hyperphp.com/BE101/index.html

It's mostly an initial effort but may help you get started.

Also, if you are interested in a tutorial for making some inexpensive exterior light poles, go to the following link:

"How to" make: Inexpensive Exterior Light poles

On the web page there's both a diagram as well as a step-by-step instruction sheet in .jpg format that you can either read online or just copy, paste, and enlarge into a word-processing document.

Hope that helps...

Tom

https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling

Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.

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Posted by Johnnny_reb on Sunday, March 30, 2008 10:48 AM

Good point. I would start by saying that you would be better off adding a completely separate bus or supply for powering your layout accessories and leave the normal track bus for track power only. Adding length to the power feeds for a structure or any other accessory by adding wire and insulating (taping) the joint. 

When someone starts talking milliamps and voltage they are talking about the amount of power it takes to make the device work. AC or DC in just the kind of voltage it uses and 12volt or 3volts is the amount of voltage.

Think of voltage as the supply of power (water) and amperage as the size of the hose. If your filling a small bucket, a small hose well work but if your fill a swimming pool it would take all day to fill it up. If you have a larger hose (more voltage) you can fill it faster, now if you have more pressure (higher amps) it goes even faster.

While some will say its over kill, I would further add that you need to find someone local to you that can give you some hands-on type of training or general pointers. I can understand that not everyone has had hands on when it comes to basic wiring and or electronic. Weather it is low voltage AC/DC or high voltage the basics are the same.

Johnnny_reb Once a word is spoken it can not be unspoken!

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  • Member since
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Lighting Your Layout for Dummies
Posted by tcf511 on Sunday, March 30, 2008 9:55 AM

Does anyone know of a book or a thread that describes options for lighting a layout but does not assume that you are an electrical engineer? My layout is all NMRA standard modules, some of which I take to meets. I would like to light up building interiors, have traffic and street lights, maybe some sound effects, an operating crossing gate, etc. I have no electrical background at all. When I see answers to questions in the forums that start calculating milliamps, etc. my eyes glaze over and I go do a different thread.

I need the very basics covered like how to extend the short little wiring that comes with a building long enough to attach it to a bus. I know that there are different kinds of distribution panels, etc but don't know what to use when. I have DCC and was thinking that I should have a separate buss for the lighting. I have an MRC power pack that I thought I could use as well.

If there is no such book, article or thread, it would be great if we could start one because I know I'm not the only person with these kinds of questions. If anyone wants to give it a shot, that would be great but please keep it at the "for Dummies" level. Big Smile [:D] Thanks.

 

Tim Fahey

Musconetcong Branch of the Lehigh Valley RR

 

 

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