LED lighting

Upper Level Layout Lighting

Pleasant Hill with just room lighting

Up until this point we really have not been worried about how to light the upper level of the layout, that is until it was built.  Now that we have a great deal of the trackwork down on the upper level we really needed to look at the lighting and figure out how to match it with the rest of the layout.... LED(heat, energy used, color temperature, cost, mounting...)  After doing a bit of research and experimenting with a few things here is what I have come up with . . .

As I have made a career out of entertainment lighting I knew what I was looking for, that I thought should be easy to mount to the ceiling, is directional, and can be fitted with and LED source.... welcome the ProCan MR16

It should be easy to mount to the ceiling, I could just use an MR16 LED source and then mount about 30 of them to the ceiling and run 12v around to them.  Wait . . . 30, these things are $30 dollars a piece, plus the cost of the MR16 LED.... there has to be another way.

I spent about an hour spent at the home supply store, MR16 lamp in hand, looking at anything that I thought might be able to work as a lighting fixture.  Finally I ended up with a PVC pipe parts in hand and some aluminum bar stock, something I could take home a try at least.  After experimenting with many different PVC pieces, I figure out that a 2" PVC coupler was going to work best for the job.  

Parts List;

2" PVC Couplers ($0.49)

MR16 LED (Amazon around $4.00)

Aluminum Bar Stock (4' makes 8 brackets for $0.75/bracket)

Nuts and Bolts ($0.50 per fixture)

MR16 ceramic housing ($0.65)

Total Price per fixture . . . . . . $6.39

There are more cost involved for cost of wire and connections between fixtures, but I was going to incur that cost anyway.

Here is the coupler and LED

Face of Fixture

One Fixture hung

Pleasant Hill LED Lighting, Room lights OFF

First 5 fixtures

Layout Lighting

Close up of LED Lit Scene

Staging Area Lighting

Got a fair amount accomplished today on the layout.

Started by finally getting the hardboard in above the staging yard for the helix base.  Once the hard board was in the lighting for the staging area became a need.  We were concerned with the type or even color of lighting that we put in on the staging area as it is mostly there just to check on thing and a little bit of work light should cars derail.

We are using LED lighting on our layout and from working on another project I had a section of blue LEDs that were pretty close to the right size, and I had already soldered on the leads!  Mounted the LEDs on the inside of the front piece of 1x4 and it is illuminating across the tracks.  The LEDs run on 12v, and though I will eventually add a larger 12v power supply to the area when lights are added for the helix area and other lighting in the nearby area, today I just found an old 12v power supply from something that disappeared awhile ago yet the power supply went into a box.