Lighting Tips

 

Tip # 1 - Guidelines For Model Lighting
With twinkling streetlights and the warm yellow glow of lights from dozens of windows, night scenes are always favorites of model railroaders. To achieve the best effect, there are certain guidelines which you should follow:


Vary light intensities. Lights inside retail or business locations should be bright. Residential lights should be dimmer.
Even within one structure, there should be variety.

Block off some windows so no light is visible. Vary the brightness in other windows by the way you position the bulbs. Windows closer to the bulb will be brighter than those farther away.

Black cardboard "baffles" taped into position within the building can also help create this effect


Walls should never glow! If you intend to light up a structure, take extra steps during the kit's assembly and painting. Paint the inside walls black. If portions of the inside walls are to be visible, cover the black paint with additional coats of the inside wall color you have chosen.

Make sure light can't escape through seams. If you have gaps in your seams, plastic spurs can be cemented in the seams, or seams can be covered with strips of black electrical tape or filled with model's putty.


Experiment using colored bulbs in specific settings for special effects.
It is always better to use two or three or more bulbs in a buildings with the bulbs wired in series. Bulbs wired this way will last longer and will build-up less heat than a single bulb burning at full intensity.


Tip # 2 - Light Up Your Layout The Easy Way
Wouldn't it be nice to avoid running wires back to the power pack every time you added a light or powered accessory?

Install a buss bar system under your platform. Run two No. 14 gauge wires beneath your layout and space them 3" apart. Attach the wires to the underside of the platform with small screw eyes. Run wires parallel under the areas where most of your lights will be located. Connect the buss bars with insulated wire to the accessory terminals of the power pack.

To connect a light, just drill a hole through the platform, pull the leads through, strip back the insulation and wrap the bare end of each lead around a buss bar. For a more permanent connection, solder may be used.

If the leads to the lights are too short, add lengths of Hook-up Wire.

In some cases, the lights can be connected in a series and a lead from each connection to the buss bars.


Tip # 3 - Wire Remote Switches With Telephone Cable
Telephone cable is an alternative choice for wiring your model railroad accessories. Phone cable contains four color coded wires solid single wires that are easily formed into hooks for simple attachment to remote switches and switching mechanisms.

Most feature red, black, green and yellow wires that help make connections right the first time. (For example: red = hot, green = right, yellow = left, black = indicator light.)

Telephone cable is available for a reasonable cost at hardware stores and home improvement centers.

Note: Telephone cable is somewhat inflexible and will break if bent too much.


Tip # 4 - Lights In A Building
Lights are not usually lit in every part of a building at one time. Make your night lighting more authentic with these ideas:

Put dividers inside buildings to separate the interior into different sections. Paint the inside building walls and dividers black.

Put house lights in some sections, and not in others.

Position the lights so they can't be seen when someone looks through the building windows.

Finish with some window shades cut from manila file folders.


Tip # 5 - Realistic Railroad Signals
The Life-Like Railroad Signal Item No. 1207 includes a detailed base. This makes it easy to use the signal any place on your layout. For an even more finished appearance, you can remove the signal from the base and "plant" the bottom of the signal in a hole in the layout.