For several years now I've been mulling over how to best light my (in-progress) multi-deck layout. When I first started thinking about it, the choices were pretty much regular old incandescent lighting, regular florescent lighting and compact florescent lighting (CFL) and that was about it. Sure there were some variations such as Christmas tree lights, "Rope" lighting, halogen "highlight" spots, etc., but in the end that was about it. The question really became, how much can you afford, what are your minimum space issues, how much heat can you tolerate, what kind of power are you willing to run, and that sort of thing. For me, on my layout, I'm looking at around 300 linear feet or thereabouts which needs lighting. If I use incandescent lighting, the electrical bills are going to get big quick. Plus there are heat and space concerns in hanging them underneath the top deck. After a number of trials and a lot of consideration, I had finally come to the conclusion that I would use the compact florescents (CFL's) and just live with the spacing issues. That seemed like the best overall tradeoff and bang-for-the-buck.
At the time, LED lighting just wasn't a practical reality. Though their potential has always been great, their cost on the other hand has always been high, comparatively speaking, lumen for lumen, not to mention concerns over their overall spectral output. These two aspects more than anything have traditionally been the limiting factors governing their acceptance as general lighting. The cost part is obvious-- if it costs more than you want to pay, you're not likely to buy it. The color part though is less obvious. The traditional "Achilles heel", as it were, of LED's as lighting, is the fact that they are designed to produce light around narrowly defined frequencies and not across the whole visual spectrum such as more traditional light sources do. Though in fairness, nearly all light sources are skewed in their spectral emissions, just not to the same degree as LED's. Hence incandescent lights appear "warm" and "yellow", florescent lights seem "glaring" and "bluish", and so on. Previously, even when you had LED lights that looked "white", the light was really only a combination of the more narrowly-defined light sources. So even though your eyes could perhaps accept the color, most cameras and visual recording devices could not. They would often hone in on the missing or under-represented light frequencies and display images that appeared "washed-out", "splotchy", or missing certain bands of color, depending on the combination of light, subject matter and recording medium. Recently however, in the past several years, that's been changing. Manufacturers have been improving their processes and are now doing a much better job of producing smooth, multi-spectral LED lighting in a variety of useful form factors.
So in the past, in selecting practical lighting sources, unless you had the engineering requirements of NASA and the funds availability of Bill Gates, LED's have historically been more of a "what if" than a "let's do it".
Gentlemen, I am happy to report, that has all changed.
Meet the LED strip light. Weighing in at practically nothing and looking more like an old celluloid moving picture reel than a modern state-of-the-art lighting system, the LED light strip comes conveniently packaged in a 5 Meter (16 feet) long "tape" strip, and operates on 12 volts DC at around 1 amp or so of power, produces no heat to speak of and costs only $20 bucks (or LESS) a roll! And if that weren't enough, it even comes with a nice bit of self-adhesive on the back side so you can just peel-n-stick it practically anywhere you want it. Though truthfully the sticky tape part isn't really that good and you'll probably want to make other arrangements to hang it. Fortunately however, that's a trivial feature. And if you want color-- have they got color... Sheesh! Any color you want, even ALL of them combined! You can get an RGB (Red-Green-Blue) version that let's you set the exact color-- whatever it is-- that suits your fancy. Hello sunset! Hello Moonshine! (Well, not Moonshine per se...)
I've been seeing these things selling on Ebay, Amazon and elsewhere awhile now but have always been a little reluctant to try them out. They've always seemed just a little bit too expensive to try on a lark for something unknown and untested. Early last year though I was in Costco and bought a little LED light strip, the kind that goes under a kitchen cabinet or something, just to see what it could be like. I figured if nothing else, I could always put it under a kitchen cabinet, or something. I set up a quick test on my layout just to see how it would look, and I have to say it wasn't too bad. Not perfect, but not terrible either. I still wasn't about to shell out the kind of money it would take (at that time) to do up the whole layout with them. And the color (I bought "bright white") wasn't quite right either, and it was particularly noticeable in the pictures. But I was definitely intrigued.
Over the past several months I keep hovering over these reels of LED lights thinking they could really be what I want. The price is still a little high, but not so terrible anymore. And you can't argue with the power-- 12 Volts at around an amp or so is pretty much chump-change in the electrical department. I have heard though that the coloration can vary, even from successive lots by the same manufacturer. So that's yet another issue to consider before plunking down some cash. And yet there is something awfully alluring about having flexible lighting less than 1/4 inch thick that runs on 12 volt power. So after about the 40-billionth time I found myself drooling over the light reels with my finger hovering over the "Buy-it-Now" button ready to strike-- I finally said "what the heck"-- it can't be as bad as all those florescent light fixtures and tubes I bought and sacked away... Some figuring with the calculator suggested that I could get by with about 14 or so of the light strips-- so I punched in 16 and hit the button before I could chicken out again.
Here's the specs on the ones that I bought:
Fast-forward to today... they showed up! All sixteen of 'em. In one big manilla envelope from some place in Hong Kong. Somehow I thought it would be a bigger package. But quickly brushing that aside, how well do they work?!?! Was it a waste of money? What's the verdict? Judge for yourselves!
First, the setup:
Using some pink foam, pins and whatnot for the deck, and a couple of 12 volt power supplies, I quickly mocked up some strips under the top deck and have taken some pictures which illustrate what you can expect from the LED strip lights. 
This is what they look like. You can see they are very thin. I also bought the strips which have the "SMD5050" style LED's on them. You can also purchase the strips with other, less-powerful lights, and in various other combinations such as "water-proof" (to what degree I have no idea), in colors (as I mentioned earlier), with the RGB set-your-own color option, etc. I suspect the RGB type, though more variable in that sense, probably don't produce as many lumens, which is the measured amount of light they are able to produce per watt of electricity. I just used some old variable power supplies that I available have from other projects. I set both to 12 Volts. Each of my supplies is enough to power one whole 5 Meter (16 foot) strip. When I get around to doing it for real, I'll most likely use the 12 volt side of some computer power supplies instead.
For my initial test, I just pinned a single line of them to the underside of the pink foam, about an eight foot section, with "T" pints, and then hooked them directly into the power supplies with some clip leads. I wasn't worried in any way about heat output which is absolutely negligible.
Once I finally had them set up, I flipped the switch and there was light! I was moderately pleased with what I saw, though the amount of illumination wasn't quite as good as I'd secretly been hoping, but it wasn't bad either. Encouraged, I looped the remaining portion of reel back around and made a second row parallel to the first. That was even nicer. So then I got out a second reel and tried yet another row in-between the first two rows. That was better still. But the backdrop was still kind-of in shadow. So I got the idea to try a fourth row angled down from the deck so that it shined more directly at the backdrop, and that looked the best of all. For comparison, I also looked at everything with the regular room illumination on-- which at this point, is mostly the upper-deck CFL lighting and some bare-bulb (CFL) room lights, but without the LED strip lights. And then again with everything, room lights, strip lights and all.
Concerned about the spectral aspect, I also hit upon the idea of setting up some photos (shamelessly plucked from the Internet-- my "inspiration" photos really) along the backdrop just to see how they would look in the LED lighting. The photos were a variety of shots of both models and prototypes, with colorations ranging from "luscious greens" to "boring blues" and exposures, some over, some under, and some right on-the-money.
Also, one other point to make before the photos-- these were all taken unprofessionally using my Samsung S3 cell phone without flash or other enhancement.
One LED Strip (Straight Down, Near the front):
Now Two Strips:
Three Strips:
Four Strips (The fourth held by my kids at the edge of the top deck so it angles back and better illuminates the backdrop):
No LED Strips, Just general room (ambient) lighting:
All lights (Room / Ambient, Three LED Strips, But No Fourth Angled Strip):
So there you have it, the long and short of it.
Conclusions...
My thoughts are at this point that it is definitely workable. I think I will probably want to get some more of the light strips-- I bought 16 the first time, and I reckon I'll probably end up buying another 16 or so. But here's another interesting thing that I didn't mention above-- you can cut them apart in about 3-inch strips. They come with pre-set cut locations where you can cut them with scissors and then solder them into whatever 12 volt power arrangements you've made. One of the things I've been thinking about is the possibility of making "lighting patterns" underneath the top deck-- particularly a "herringbone" pattern. That would provide pretty good illumination overall I would think, albeit at a slightly higher cost, plus the issue of soldering the wires and such. (But we're model railroaders and not intimidated in any way by soldering, are we?? 
Another possibility that I've been thinking about is perhaps hanging them in strips, similar to the way I've illustrated in the photos, but instead of hanging them straight down, perhaps placing them on cardboard (or something) that's been bent at a shallow angle which would permit them to direct more of their light from the front which would permit them to illuminate the backdrop more effectively. Or perhaps a combination of these techniques.
Cost-wise, all of the strips-- so far-- all 16 reels, only cost about $250 bucks, and that included FREE SHIPPING from Hong Kong. All of the sellers I looked at offered free shipping, though if you're really so inclined you can probably find someone willing to charge you for it...
Color-wise I'm satisfied with the results. In looking through the various photos I've taken and comparing them to the originals, they look quite acceptable to me, and probably will be even more so when I get another strip or two up and going. So far I'm thinking that about four strips should look about right, though the pattern may need adjusting as I mentioned above. Another thing I want to test are the RGB strips. Now that I've had some experience with the plain white ones, I'm thinking it might be cool to set up another strip that can change color which could let me model those sunrises, sunsets, and some moonshine.
Now all I need is a still...
John Whitten
Any comments?
