Lighting considerations for the Fidalgo Island RR
Given that model building is one of my primary interests, how they are displayed on the layout is a priority for me. Lighting plays an important role in the look and feel of the railroad, so I am fairly particular about the quality of light and took my time to get it where I wanted it. Even to the point of tearing some out and starting over to get just what I wanted. That part of the story will come later.
When I visit a layout, I tend to spend as much time looking over the installation as I do the railroad itself. I have seen a lot of different approaches to lighting, all with pros and cons. Based on my experiences at other layouts, this list represents the different aspects of lighting that I wanted to plan around for my project:
- Color
- Quantity
- Managing Shadows
- Power requirements
- Heat
- Form factor
Color
One aspect of lighting that impacts the appearance of a layout more than is often expected, is the color of the light. I am not talking about colored lights like we see during the holidays; I am talking about the variations of what is considered to be “white” light.
Modern lighting comes in an astounding variety of colors. This type of color is referred to as color temperature. Unless you see lights with different color temperatures next to one another, you might not even be aware of how different they can be.
Color temperature is generally referred to in two ways. First, more casually it is referred to as being warm or cool. Warm means the light has more red in it while cool means it has more blue. The picture above shows the most common range of temperatures you may encounter. If you saw these bulbs in the package with no power, they would all look like normal, white light bulbs. The variation in color temperature is not visible until they are turned on.
The second way the color temperature is measured, the more scientific way, is by degrees Kelvin represented by the letter K. This is typically a number between 2000K and 6500K where 2000K is warmer and 6500K is cooler.
In general, color temperature can be summed up as follows:
| Temp | Kelvin | Description |
|---|
| Warm | 3000K | A white light that has a more red/yellow hue |
| Daylight | 5000K | A white light at appears more white to the naked eye |
| Cool | 6000K | A white light that has a more blue hue |
When you purchase light bulbs, the package will most likely be labeled with the Temp or the Kelvin value and sometimes both.
For most people, right around 5000K will seem the most balanced. Meaning, will appear at be more like natural light. This is often labeled as daylight.
If you want consistency, try to match the K values of your lights. Warm vs. cool can vary from manufacturer. Some manufacturers will label their products as cool and they will be 6000K while other manufacturers will label their products as cool but they will be 6500K. The latter will appear more blue than the former. Same for the other temperatures, warm can mean anything from 2000K to 4000K and daylight can be 4000K-6000K. If you match the K values, you have a better chance that the color temperatures will match across manufacturers.
Choosing the Color
Like everything else in modeling, the “right” color is up to you. Color can really set the mood for a section of the railroad. Typically, warmer colors are used if you want to model early morning or late afternoon/evening. Daylight represents midday when the sun is brightest and cool represents dawn/dusk. While testing lights I discovered that cooler colors worked better if I wanted it to appear overcast or rainy.
Also, there is no rule that says you have to use only one. You may want to highlight one area and intentionally leave another area a bit more subdued. Just be aware that if you have different colors right next to one another the differences will be more obvious. And, if your goal is consistency, be careful if mixing lights from different manufacturers.
For the Fidalgo Island RR, I am using 5000K throughout the layout. I want the color to be as close to white as possible. At the end of the peninsula I have a couple fixtures with 6000K lights but they blend ok and aren't obvious.
Quantity
So, how much light is enough light? This is another personal preference thing. For me, I want things easy to see. The intention is for my railroad to host operating sessions. This means folks will need to be able to easily see car numbers, building signs, and switch points. In N scale this can be challenging even in good light. So, I want to make sure I have adequate lighting everywhere.
When considering the quantity of light, think about the volume of space you are lighting. For example, my railroad is two decks. The upper deck has almost 19” of vertical space from rail to ceiling and is about 19” deep front to back (A). The lower deck has about 11” of clearance from the rail to the underside of the upper deck and is about 15” deep from front to back (B).
There is considerably more volume to light on the upper deck. This means that if I put the same number and type of lights on both decks, the lower level will be considerably brighter because there will be less volume to fill but the same amount of light being provided.
Distance to the light source is also significant. For my railroad, the upper deck has an additional 9” of vertical space between the lights and the deck as compared to the lower level. We setup a test area on the benchwork to get some idea of how much difference this would make.
We used the same LED lights to test the heights on both levels. On the upper level things were darker down at the track level. Shadows were more defined and the overall feel was darker. On the lower level where the panel was 9” closer, the lighting was fuller and brought out more color. There was less shadow too because there was more light to fill the volume.
The light dissipated quite a bit in that extra 9” which means I need more and/or brighter light sources for the upper deck if I want the amount of light to be similar to the lower level.
Managing Shadows
Managing shadows can be one of the trickier aspects of the lighting plan. Shadows can show up in the darndest places and be surprisingly obvious if they show on places like a big section of beautiful blue sky on your backdrop.
Sometimes you may want shadows in order to highlight one area while de-emphasizing another and that’s fine. The key is to make sure you are getting them where you want them – and avoid them where you don’t.
Some aspects of shadows are obvious. For example, if you choose to use track lights to light your layout, you need to figure out where to put them so they light the railroad, but where operators won’t end up casting their own shadows on the layout while running trains.
The seemingly simple solution to this problem is to move the lights forward, positioning them directly over the layout to avoid the operators. This can result in unexpected shadows from the models themselves.
In the case of my railroad, I have two decks. I don’t have a lot of choice about where to put the lights for the lower level. I have to mount them on the underside of the upper deck benchwork. This means I can only come out as far as the front edge of the benchwork and the lights will point down on the deck below. I need to balance the location of the models below and the location of the lights above to avoid the structures casting shadows on themselves.
Here is an example of what I am talking about. In the photo below, I show a set of buildings on the lower deck. They start at the front edge of the benchwork and each exposure, they move 4” farther back.
Here the light source is evenly distributed across the bottom of the upper deck. The only thing that changes is the models move 4” back for each example. Notice how deep the shadows are in the first exposure. You can hardly tell there are even signs on the buildings, let alone read them.
This is why you want to be mindful of where the lights are positioned relative to where the models will be placed. For those of us doing multi-deck layouts, it can be even more challenging because we only have so many options for the lower decks.
Another aspect of shadows is based on the spacing of your lights and the type of bulb used. Some types of lights are very focused while others provide more light over a broader area. Track lights are a good example for both cases. I have seen track lights used on many layouts due to the ease of installation. When you purchase the fixtures and bulbs for track lighting typically you choose between spot and flood lights.
Spotlights produce a focused light and the area outside the focus tends to be in harsher shadows. Flood lights spread light over a larger area and have softer edges so there are less harsh shadows as you get further from the light. Spotlights are good if you want to highlight a specific scene.
Floods are desirable for general lighting because the soft edges of the light produced by each bulb are easy to blend together when you use a row of them to light a long section of the layout. This is where you need to watch out for unexpected shadows.
When using a row of light bulbs to light a long section of layout, the spacing between and type of bulbs needs to be considered so you don’t end up with alternating dark/light patches of light. The farther apart they are placed, the more shadow there will be between them. This can be especially noticeable on the backdrop if you are planning on having a lot of sky.
All of this plays into how many lights do you need. The question to answer are: What effect do you want? If you want smooth, consistent lighting over a large area, how many are needed to avoid too much shadow between each light?
One last thing I want to mention here is to beware of unexpected shadows resulting from the placement of the light fixtures. Shadows can show up unexpectedly, even when you think you have so much light you don’t need to worry about them. One place they will be most obvious is on your backdrop. Sharp shadows will really stick out if they are on your backdrop.
An example to watch out for here is lighting areas that go around corners. Say you have to go around an outside corner (around the end of a peninsula). If you have brighter lights on one side of the corner, it is possible you may end up with unintentional shadows on the other side of the corner where there is less light. The brighter lights will overpower the dimmer lights, resulting in shadows on that side of the corner – even though it is lit.
Another example is if you mount your light fixtures between supporting elements (say support arms for a lighting valance or supports for an upper deck while mounting fixtures for a lower deck) be aware that the support arms might cast shadows. The closer the bulbs are to them the harsher the shadows will be. I found it best to always mount the lights to the bottom of the support elements to ensure they were never between the light source and the models below.
Power Requirements
Another consideration for lighting is power. For folks who are building a small shelf layout or tabletop type setup, this probably isn’t an issue. When you start to get to layouts that fill entire rooms or buildings then power may become a consideration.
I have a bit over 200 linear feet of railroad. ~150’ of that needs lighting (the rest is in a helix). This is split between two decks so I need light for both levels. I am running in the ballpark of 1600 watts of lighting. Not a problem for a standard household circuit but enough that I needed to be mindful of the load to make sure I am not running too close to the limit. As it is, I am dividing this over two circuits to be as safe as possible. When I had the house built I specifically had 4 circuits wired into this room. I am not certain the contractor believed my intention was to build a model railroad. I suspect he was imagining something more akin to Breaking Bad…
Anyway, the point here is a reminder to keep track of how much power your lights will use as you are planning. If you have a large layout, this is something that can sneak up on you and you may end up using more than you thought you would.
The good news is modern lighting technology, like LEDs, is much more efficient than the old incandescent and fluorescent lights so you get a lot more bang for your buck but you still need to be mindful of how much power you need. Some may be reading this and going 1600 watts? If you used LEDs you would not need near that much power. Well the fact of the matter is, I am using all LEDs and my power requirements are 1600 watts.
Heat
Ok, so in this section when I talk about temperature, I really mean hot/cold, burn your fingers type temperature, not color. Typically, layouts are in enclosed spaces. If you want to host operators that means you will end up with a lot of bodies sharing those enclosed spaces. In these conditions, managing the room temperature needs to be a consideration. A lot of bodies in an enclosed room with a lot of bright lights – things can heat up in a hurry and everyone is miserable.
Don’t need to spend a lot of time on this but I wanted to make sure that for folks who are new to the topic that this was on their radar. You need to be mindful of how much heat you may be adding to your environment from your lighting solution. In the old days of incandescent lighting and halogen track lights this was a huge problem. Fluorescent lights were a vast improvement from the heat perspective and LEDs are even better.
LEDs have become quite popular and are very efficient from both the perspectives of heat and power required. That being said, depending on the form factor and power requirements, even LEDs will produce some heat so don’t just assume that if LEDs are used, there will be no extra heat in the room.
Form Factor
Given the vast selection available, power efficiency, and the fact that prices have come down a lot over the past couple years, I am going to assume that most folks starting a layout now, will most likely use some sort of LED based solution for lighting. So, with that in mind this section is only going to discuss LED relate options and skip incandescent and fluorescent options.
When I started the very first layout project in this room 15 years ago, I was all set to go with fluorescent lights and even installed a suspended ceiling in the room to facilitate hanging the lights. When we started moving the new railroad from Bob’s garage into this room two summers ago, I already know I wanted to go with LEDs. We had experimented with LED strip lights on the modules in Bob’s garage.
We found them very easy to use and they put out a nice even light. Additionally, they were tiny. They are so slim they take up virtually no space. When you have a double deck layout, space available for hanging lights, especially for the lower deck, is at a premium. Anything you can do to reduce space requirements is a plus.
LED strip lights were originally designed to provide under cabinet lighting in high end kitchens. The product we were using was readily available from Amazon. We were using these: LED Strip Lights on Amazon
They have an adhesive back so all you need to do is stick them to whatever you want to mount them on and that’s pretty much all there is to hanging them. Some of the older strips had a reputation for the adhesive failing over time and the strips sagging/falling off. That has improved since the early days. I had some of these in place for 2 years and in that time had no issues with adhesive failing or strips starting to sag.
You can cut the strips to the length needed. The strips are marked at regular intervals where they can be safely cut. There are a variety of connectors available to attach sections together easily.
When you purchase strip lights they come in rolls and tend to be 16 or 32 feet in length. They come in 12, 24, and 48 volt. On Amazon, many come in a package where you get 1 or 2 rolls of lights with a barrel connector prewired to attack to a power supply, connectors that make it easy to connect the strips together, and a wall wart style power supply that is plug-and-play ready to run the lights.
A word of caution here… Most of the time, the power supplies they provide in the package are barely powerful enough to drive one strip of lights. Also, the write-ups they have on the lights talk up the fact that it is so easy to hook multiple strips together, but they never talk about the additional power supplies required. Some of the prepackaged sets come with multiple rolls of lights. ALWAYS make sure the power supply provided is actually enough to drive the strips you connect.
One set I purchased had a power supply that would throw its thermal protection breaker every so often because they cut it so close (it was rated at 20 watts and the strip of LEDs was rated at 20 watts. This brings up one other thing, it is generally not a good idea to run a transformer right at it rated limit.
There are all kinds of recommended safety margins when you go read up on them. Personally, I prefer 30%. Meaning, I always try to make sure my power supply is rated for at least 30% more than the max load I am going to put on it. With the LED strip lights, If I need to power 20 watts, I want a power supply rated at 28 watts or more. In this case I would go for 30.
If you are purchasing strip lights, you also want to be aware of the density of the LEDs on the strip. This refers to how close together they are mounted on the strip. Typically, per 16’ strip, you will see 300 or 600. As you would guess, 600 means twice as many as 300 so you will get more light.
Typically strips run at 12 or 24 volt. This also affects the amount of light you get. The 12 volt strips are easy to install. 12 volt power supplies are easy to find and the strips put out a nice even amount of light – and virtually no heat at all.
The 24 volt system run brighter. If you buy the strips with 600 LEDs per length, you get twice the number of LEDs and they are brighter to boot so you get significantly more light. The cost being that 24 volt strips do produce a little heat. It is negligible but noticeable if you are checking for it.
I originally planned on doing all my lighting with the 12 volt strips (I’ll go into this more in my next post about installing the lights on the layout). I liked the form factor, I liked the ease of installation, and I also liked the price. I could get a 16’ roll of lights for $10. You still needed to buy a power supply but I found a number of larger 12V power supply options that would allow me to power a number of strips all at once for a good price.
Another option I discovered later was LED tubes like these: LED Tubes on Amazon
These are 48” long, have built in power supplies and are completely self-contained units that can be daisy chained together for up to 10 units at a time. They are a completely plug and play solution that snap into mounting clips (supplied with the lights) mounted on the ceiling. I disassembled one of these. They are really just a single strip of LEDs inside a white plastic tube diffuser. I never checked but I suspect the built in power supplies run at 42 volts and these tubes put out a lot of light. They are very easy to install and you pay about $60 for 32’ of light. For me, very much worth the extra cost. I have also heard from a couple people that similar lights are available from Costco as shop lights.
One small downside of this type of light, they produce more heat than the other LED options I explored (my cats loved sleeping under them). However, given how much light they produce, I would expect a bit of heat.
Saving the best for last, my personal opinion is that LED panels are the way to go. They are a bit more expensive but the ease of installation, lower amount of heat, and most importantly, quality of the light is well worth the extra cost. I am talking about units like these on Amazon: LED Panel Lights on Amazon
The thing about these panels is the form factor. They are a panel, typically 1’x4’ or 2’x4’ that is 1/4" thick. It has a power supply mounted on the back that is about 1” thick and 3” wide and 6” inches long.
The real selling point on these panels for me is that you basically get a 1’x4’ panel of light that is 1/4" thick. They use two rows of 42V LEDs to edge light a diffuser panel that is backed by a white reflector panel (I disassembled one to see how they are built). It produces a bright even light across the entire surface of the panel. Hard to get any better than this for lighting the lower level. I’ll go into more detail when I discuss the installation.
For the time being, here is where this is heading:
While installing the lights for this railroad, I learned a lot about what I wanted to look for in my lighting. I ultimately ended up using all three of these types of LEDs. This post is already pretty long so I am going to cover the lessons learned and the actual installation in my next post that covers the actual installation and shows them in place in the layout.
