I'm debating the merits of lighting for my new train room. Room measures roughly 12x12, five sides. Ceilings in this house are 12-foot. Room is painted sky blue with a flat white ceiling. My last (linear) layout was lit by LED tubes and thin long fixtures hanging from chains (8-ft ceiling). The light put out (5000K) was nice and bright, but was irritating due to no valence. I sometimes wore a baseball hat when running trains just to keep it out of my eyes. It doesn't really look all that great, and I would have to build a whole "ring" of tube lights, hanging on long chains. What about using four or more recessed lighting canisters to illuminate the room? My 12-ft hallways are WELL illuminated, just using 65w equivalent LED floods. I can get brighter ones should I need to. My layout surface is at 46" high. I guess one alternative would be ceiling mounted floods that I can point. Has anyone gone this route? I'm not seeing a lot of pitfalls. The cans would probably be clustered somewhat over the interior operating area, to illuminate each of the wall areas. Operators stand in the middle, with trains all around them. Attic is accessible. I would just hire an electrician to accomplish, and even have an existing unused wall switch. I don't think the cost would be that much different, and it would certainly LOOK much better. But will it light it up? What say you, old timers?
I have always preferred indirect lighting. Those nice, high twelve foot ceilings may require more wattage for indirect to be bright enough, but the light will certainly be distributed evenly!
Thanks, that was my thought also. There is a ceiling fan (centered), but I don't see it casting a shadow. It also has a light source. "Light distributed evenly". Yeah, that's the trick. Recessed cans would sure look better, but ceiling-mount fixtures would be both 1) can be aimed, and 2) could be removeable. Hmmmm.
Adjustible track lighting ......Place it about 1 foot in front of the layout . Tracks can be cut so you can adjust the leingth .
Track lighting isn't pretty, but that doesn't matter so much because I think it's still fashionable. Something can be ugly as sin, as long as it's fashionable, right? But the best thing about it is, if you try it and find the spotlighting too harsh, you can try aiming their beams across the room to see if pointing them at parts of the layout farther away helps soften the lighting. And if that casts too many sharp shadows too, you can point them at the walls and ceiling and use them for indirect lighting. They are flexible.
Yes, that's looking like a good solution. Twelve feet in the air, they shouldn't be too noticeable, especially with a layout down below being the focus. I can remove them if I want at a later time with very little damage. Just can't see hanging chains and tubes, too clunky looking. I can still get an electrician to climb into the attic and get that one wall switch to power the ceiling array. Off to look at track lighting I guess.
You could get all fancy and used recessed style Theater/Gallery lighting http://www.lightingcommerce.com/Eur...MI8crMyOPm1wIVgcBkCh0D9QsmEAYYAyABEgIbtPD_BwE
YoHo, that is cool! Not that expensive considering. Maybe two of those? My wife would probably freak out if I cut squares like those in the ceiling, LOL.
Track lighting with LED bulbs ! Cheap /easy / 12/12 room you probably need 16 cans , the most expensive pare will be the bulbs ...
I'm going to have to keep this in mind as I am investigating LED lighting for my 'train shed' (12x16) dbl-deck layout. I purchased a couple of LED 3000K tubular shaped 'shop lites' for experiment, that give out pretty good light, but I can tell it might get annoying if looking up at the ceiling.
I love the tubes' light output, but you need a valance to work with it. Don't want to fool with all of that. Tubes would be ideal for a lower deck, since you won't be looking at those. I'm using one tube to light up the closet area, which holds the yard. In that application, it's not in your eyes.
I had tracked spot lights in the train room for 16 years on 2 different layouts. They were left over from the kitchen when we changed lighting there so cost nothing. Everything was surface mounted with wire mold and I plugged it into a wall outlet and I had a dimmer switch on them. I had a normal 8 ft ceiling height so could reach them to adjust for direction and move them along the track as needed. Each also had an on / off switch. What I did not like was that they were hot, this was why my wife didn't want them in the kitchen any more. To get around this I only used full brightness for photos and dimmed them for normal operations. Now days, you can get LED spot lights for a reasonable price so that is not a problem.
