Christmas Lights to Illuminate buildings?

Christmas lights generally are spaced about 6" apart and come about 30 or more lights per string.  What would you do with all the extra lights?

Earl

If the light strings are LED's you can cut them out and use them separately with the proper resistors, etc., to light up whatever.

Well, he might have 30 things to light. Or, if he only had 15, he could cut the wire between the lights, use lamp cord and wire nuts, and extend the bulbs to the building sites. The extras, he could either leave lit under the board, or unscrew bulbs if the string stayed lit w/o a bulb (most don't) or he could put dead bulbs if he wanted no light or lower watt bulbs for less light or make shields around the bulbs for less light. Lots of options.

A few years ago, I took strings of the 6 or so to the string that they made for those ceramic houses, and cut them apart, dropped the wires down from the top of the board, and wire nutted them underneath for the 110V feed they were used to. Worked great for my ceramic houses for the Christmas layout...I will post a pict if you want of the lit items. I wired the MTH and other low volt items to a transformer the way I had done for years.

This year, to speed things up, I wired most of the houses (even the MTH w/ the light ready-made-to-go and the Plasticville ones) to use the 110 lights. The bulb is the same one used in 7W night lights, a C7 might be what it is called. The results were great, and easy. I just made sure no bulb was against the plastic in case they did get hot enough to deform the plastic. No problems so far.

Two others who put train gardens up, after seeing mine, decided that next year they were going to do the same thing.

You ask "How was this easier?" It was much easier feeding wires, twisting the connections, and using wire nuts made for such wires using lamp cord that is thicker. Not having to fool w/ the small gauge wires in the prelit houses was a plus. And since these are temporary setups, time is of the essence, sometimes!

I know, the old, "Don't mix 110 and low voltage" and "You'll burn the house down" business will pop up here. But if you are careful, use different wires for each voltage, properly nut the wires, and work knowing what you are doing, the risk is about the same as rewiring a lamp for your living room. If you can't do that, don't do this. Since many people can't wire the low voltage bulbs, it would make little sense for them to fool w/ 110.

Next year, IF I put up another train garden, I may buy a box of the new lights (LED?) and cut them to see how they work. In conclusion, no one knew what was inside of my buildings, everyone who saw things liked what they saw, no fires were started, I did not electrocute or even shock myself either year, and I liked how things turned out. So, I say if you know what you are doing, go for it. Greg

Over 50 years ago thats how we would lite up our plasticville buildings. We would drill a hole in the platform (back then a 4X8 sheet of plywood) just big enough for the socket to go through, then we would screw in the bulb. We would space what we needed and leave the ones we did not need hang lit under the platform. The sheet of plywood was usually setting on top of cinder blocks or bricks. This worked well for many years. Of course back then one bulb burned out they all went out. (we always understood you can't have everything).

My father used a similar technique then, except he cut the lights apart. Then, dropped the two wires from the socket down through two small holes in the board, and wired the socket wires to each other but not in series like in the 110 version, but in parallel (one burns out, the others stay lit) He then powered the bulb/sockets with the transformer voltage! The bullbs were low voltage bulbs anyway, that was why they were wired in series.

Worked, and still works great. You can use modern 16, 18 or 20 volt bulbs in sockets made for them, wire them in parallel, and have all the light you need for houses/structures.

Greg

here's an interesting "how to do it"...

http://familygardentrains.com/...uilding_lighting.htm

howard

I keep nothing but low voltage under my layout. It's too easy to forget what wire is able to knock you out when you cut into it or tie on to something else.

          John

our local True Value has clear lights starting at 10 lights and up. I've got several strings lighting up Plasticville. Use them under the tree for the Boss's ceramic houses.

The only problem I see is durability...  I've lost all sorts of light strings over the years... I don't think I'd have faith in them to the point where I would build them into a structure and let them go for years of unattended maintenance... so I would probably use a more permanent option than Christmas lights.

That's the way my Dad did also, and why several of the Plasticville buildings from then that I still have in boxes have melt marks on them lol!

I know it's been mentioned before in this thread but as far back as the late 1960's when the miniature Christmas lamps came out I bought a 100 lamp set.  Then I cut it up with each lamp having about a 4" pigtail lead.  The set I bought was series wired and I calculated these were 1.5 volt lamps.  Of course there are (were?) 50 light sets where each lamp is 3 volts.  Why I included "were" is that today places like Home Depot are giving credit for turning them in in favor of new LED lighting.  But I'm sure many of us have some old sets as I have to have an ample supply of cheap lighting.  I think you can still buy clear blinking lamps too.  Get 'em while you can!

Phil 

I went through the process of trying to figure out how to add lots of lighting.  I finally settled on a couple AC in -DC out stepdown converters ($8.00 each total from China)  and I get 12 volt LED that are already made up.  A friend gave me the end of a couple of spools of Cat 6 ethernet wire and I use that to run my LEDs to a telephone punchdown block that is separated into two blocks, those go to the Stepdown converters and then to the transformer.  I also have a computer power supply that I need to mod the connectors so I can use that to power lighting.

I have a little bit of a different way of going about this.  My layout is never the same for very long, so holes in the table top and things being glued or screwed down dont work for me.  Sometimes I want my Plasticville up, sometimes I'd rather have just the train specific buildings (stations, semaphores, whistle shack) and if these have lights they just lock on to the track, so they are a non issue.

But for each Plasticville building a have a Sylvania Dot-it tap light.  They are about two and a half inches across, circular, and have a number of LED's in the center.  The lens in the center could be tinted warmer with a paint or colored cellophane, but I have not done so yet.  I believe they take AA batteries.  

Quick and sloppy but works for me

Thanks for the ideas guys!

My father did, basically, the same thing.  Only problem was the 110v bulbs melted my Plasticville!  I might still have the mangled school house.

I'd go for low voltage, LED's preferred.

Ron

Hi Micheal, I've done this in the past to good results. However if 1 bulb goes out you loose them all, but not too many in the string, so no big deal. The nice thing is the low heat of the bulbs & the soft warm light the bulbs produce. 

     I power the bulbs from a small transformer such as a Lionel 1010. An adjustable throttle makes things easy, but fixed volts works, but you'll need to experiment more to get the right # of bulbs to get the brightness you want.

     As note, look at the spec sheet of the light string. The voltage of the bulbs is listed. It will change depending on how many bulbs were on the string. Replacement bulbs should be the same or close to what you start with. So keep the leftover bulbs from the string as spares.

   For instance the last set I did was (I think) 2.5v bulbs with 100 on the string. The string from the factory is actually 3wires total , with bulbs all on the same wire string. Cut out 6 bulb string from the bunch. 

   I hooked that short string to 1010 transformer & ran about 3/4 throttle for a nice little glow. Make sense? Again, this is the concept & you need to experiment to find how many per string works for you. No danger, the worst thing is burnt out bulbs. Obviously never try to plug a cut string into the wall!!

   You'll need to experiment with your bulbs to find how many bulbs per string works best. Start with too many bulbs & work you way down. If you start with too few you can burn them out instantly. Extend the wires between bulbs as needed. Use as many bulbs per building as to what you think looks good. I just made a little L bracket from tin & zip tied the bulb holder to it to hold bulb in place. Be mindful of mounting as not to short wiring/socket on the tin.  Keep plenty of slack in wires as I find the bulbs can be hard to pull out when they need changing & you need slack to get a good grip on the socket.

   I like this as it is all powered by the layout transformer(s) & is all low volts. The adjustable volts is nice as you can dim them for night & turn up for day viewing. Plus cost is really low. I just use crimp connectors for all connections. Fast & easy.

    Very best, Don Johnson