I am in the process of rebuilding the in home, basement layout room. I need some input on train room, layout, and general lighting. What kind of lighting do you find best for the layout and for the rest of the room that the layout is in. This will be at least a 17' X 30' room. Ideas on lighting the area, fluorescent, incandescent or a combination of both? Any input would be welcomed.
Mark, My layout also is in my basement. As I had built it I had noticed the regular 100 watt light bulbs weren't enough. So, I went an replaced them all with 4 foot fluorescent lights, and use soft white tube bulbs in the fixtures! I find that they're cool burning lights, not to much a worry of heat trouble in close areas, and light the whole basement well...Their is a total of 6 fixtures in my basement that are 2 bulbs per fixture. Which lights the whole area nicely.... As for spot lighting I don't, I barely have head room so.... And I know the spot lighting creates alot of heat so.... I didn't want to chance that. Which is another reason why I went with fluorescent lights.... Being I can fit the 4 foot section between rafters of my basement with an aluminum globe to reflect the light down, and be out of the way, but still have the bulbs low enough to cast the light out beyond the floor rafters and so on.... HTH [ 05. January 2003, 10:58: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
I also use twin 4 foot fluorescent lights mounted directly over the layout. My layout is an around the wall style. I space the light fittings approx 3 feet apart this gives a good spread of light over the layout
I have the room, so I use track lighting (an appropriate name for them, isn't it?) I also have 4 and 8 foot long fluorescent for general lighting.
I too have 4-foot flouresccent lights in my train room- matter of fact, several fixtures all over the room, and all of them directly over the layout.
DITTO on the flouresent fixtures. I have one 8' (just because I had it) the rest are 4'. all are mounted over the layout and I find there is no need for any other lighting. I started out with regular 100 watt bulbs then went to the flouresent later. What a shock!! I had to go back and touch up a lot of scenery that looked ok with standard bulbs but looked really bad under the brighter light!! p.s. the room size is about 30' by 22' with a wall partially down the center
It's hard to have "too much" lighting. I'm more of a "fixture is better" kind of guy. You can always turn a light off if it's too bright, but you can only turn a light so far on.... I've rarely seen where one style of light can do it all. They all have pros and cons. Better coloring vs. heat & energy consumption. I'd suggest using plenty of flourescents for general lighting, and then using spots to highlight the areas, even if it's just the area you happen to be working in at the time. Low voltage spots can be good for this, if you can get past the cost. Metal halide bulbs are very good too, but pricey. The flourescents have various temperature bulbs available which can help in rendering correct colors. There's a new 4' tube out called "daylight" that has more blue in it that helps to render colors better. As a further complication factor, do you plan on doing any night-time or dusk lighting on your layout? A city scene lighted up at night can be stunning. Mark in Utah
Hi, My dad got 4 foot neons for me and i have two floodlights on top of my layout.My layouts in the basement ..*sigh*what would i do without my dad
We've had several dicussions on this on the Atlas forums. My 12 X 17 layout is lighted by track lights. Big mistake. 20 bulbs times 50 Watts is just too hot. In a cool basement (my trains are in an upstairs family room, where my wife says "normal" people would put a pool table) it might be more tolerable, especially in northern climates. I recently replaced the bulbs with Commercial Electric Flourescents. The Lumens go up, but the Watts go down. My old 50 Watt incandescent bulbs put out 700 Lumens. My new flouresent "sprial bulbs" put out the light equivalent of a 150 Watt incandescent, but at only 27 Watts each. I am a "Can't be bright enough" guy. However, even at half the wattage, the train room still gets hot. There are also 75 and 100 Watt equivalent bulbs. The 75 Watters (actually about 18 Watt heat output) also come in "daylight." These bulbs last forever, about 7 years, but when I replace them, I may go for both daylight and slightly smaller wattage. Of course, I may have my ceiling fan fixed by then. As the box for the bulbs says, "its the future of lighting."
Check out the fouro selection at your local home warehouse store. They come in a variaty of different colours. I like the "cool white" variaty, but you might want to get a few different ones and try them out and see how you like them.
Jeff, I agree that standard 50 watt track lighting can be and is hot! But have you checked out the little 12v d.c. systems that are now available? They don't take alot of room and stay fairly cool. I'd say there's not alot of differance from a flourescent setup .. more like a flashlight Track lighting, (incandescent) is quite abit more friendly to taking photographs too.
Jeff, Unfortunately, my fiancee had decided to clean out the drawer in which I kept the information on those 12 v. track light units, and I can't remember the manufacturer off the top of my head. I found the units in a fairly large light store in Redding, CA. Perhaps if you look into a local light store in your area, you can find the information you need. Good luck
I like halogen lighting, but there is a severe heat issue with that. They've quit making the larger (150-300w) halogen lights for home use because of fire hazards... but I feel that well designed 50w fixtures produce lots of light without such a fire hazard.
The room is large enough that a lot of lighting, which it needs, is going to heat up the room. In your room, I would probably do flourescent lighting with incadescent spot lights. But instead of using incadescent bulbs, I would use the new flourescent bulbs in the incandescent fixture.
