I lit my room with strips of LEDs. I used warm and cool whites and put them on dimmers. This allows me to alter the overall brightness and colour temperature of the light.

Lots of details here: http://cabin-layout.blog...2/room-LED-lighting.html

I am happy with how they have worked and would not hesitate to do it again. In addition it is a rather economical solution when compared to other systems.

Hi Nigel,

That sounds exactly like what they had at miniature wunderland. Do you happen to know what those flourescent light tubes are?

Thanks

ive got a 100watt bulb in mine works a treat

alan plymouth

8 years ago I outfitted my train room (a 400 sq ft converted attic in a 16th century house) with GU 25 fittings, with the idea of taking advantage of the large number of alternative light sources available with this standard socket.
Originally used halogens: good light but also lots of heat. Great in winter but with AC working overtime for the rest of the year.
Tried fluorescent. Cool but not enough light and wrong color temperature. Takes several minutes before getting to nominal intensity. Expensive too and contrary to expectation short lifespan.
Moved to LED. Early ones have poor light and wrong color temp too.
Modern LED are now up to the task.
Will start experimenting with light effects when my layout gets further along 🙂☺

Hello Mehmet,

.....Ahhhhh, The Bosporus at sunset from Asia.

Delightful, wonderful memories of visits to your enchanting city.

Also as seen from the European side :




Regards,

and best wishes for the well-being of you and your family in these troubled times,

Philip

When visiting Nigels train room it is a bit disconcerting to have the blinds suddenly come down and the lighting turn itself down, thunderstorm start - all just as you need the light to get a train rerailed or you are putting stock on the parade track.

Sorry - I haven't got any videos! Perhaps someone who has visited my layout for my open days has one. I know there are some still photos of the night effects in the open days thread.

I think it's probably quite tricky to film the effects, as clever camera functions will try and compensate for the change in light. It needs a proper video session with manual camera control, I think.

Nigel

If you don't get any good steers here, look on some coral reef tropical fish sites (a former hobby of mine), these guys know how to control lighting over their tanks all the way down to phases of the moon and transits of Venus.

I've been planning along this line of having day-sunset-night-sunrise-day sequences in my layout room as I build up the room and layout.

To that end, I installed track lighting that takes line voltage track lights - the thinking is that I can use Philips Hue (or others if they come along) in the MR-16 bulb with GU10 bulb base.
Philips makes a Hue bulb in the GU10 base/MR16 form factor.. Its spendy, where a a GU10 LED based white non-smart bulb is around $4.80, the Hue color changeable one is $50 for one bulb. So at this point I just purchased ONE bulb to test the theory. Right now I've got about 10 or so heads on the ceiling and all but the 1 Hue are white LED 3000K temperature lamps.

The plan is to have the computer control software be able to use the RGB setting capabilities of the lights to paint the scene going from daylight to an dimmer orange and red sunset transition to blue night and back through a sunrise to daylight. If I place the heads well I can even have the sun rise from one end of the room and set at the other side of the room.

Thats the theory.

In practice, the GU10 bulbs are still too expensive to outfit the room just yet (there's no rush, I'll put that in last, for now the white lights will do just fine).
The software needs to be there. While I can set the color of each individual bulb in the room (presently only one) independently by software, presently the Philips software isn't very good for that and I've not checked how a zigbee home automation hub would work in this regard, since one may or may not have to work through a Philips Hue hub. Technology wise, its doable, whether brand closed architectures and restrictive idiocy will be a problem I'm not sure.

So I'm planning but only have the basic infrastructure in. I expect the implementation landscape could change in the next 2 years to make it cheaper/better - or the GU10 base bulbs may disappear and put the kaibash on the whole plan.

brilliant layout nigel
very good video glenn

alan plymouth

I have a bunch of Hue lights including two Hue LED strips. Yes, expensive, but I got mine for free - but that is another story...

I used the LED strips to create both sunrise and sunset scenes as you suggest, as well as an animated aurora borealis. It is very hard to photograph, but you can see some images at http://cabin-layout.blog.../07/aurora-borealis.html

and

http://cabin-layout.blog.../07/bridge-backdrop.html