Fluorescent bulbs in trainroom

I would caution about using the fluorescent tube lighting - I have seen it fas reds visiously.  It may affect other colors as well.  I woul dadvise to use such sparingly.  It must be a UV issue.

Hi Kevin....

I went with the Daylight bulbs to which you refer.  I like them very much and they work quite well for picture taking.  Unless the tubes are a couple of feet or so from your layout, you shouldn't have to worry about fading of colors...but, if you want to take extra precautions, you can get UV filters that slip right over the bulbs.  They are available at HD and Lowes as well as most lighting suppliers. 

Alan

Try these:

http://www.ergomart.com/fluore...rs/light-filters.htm

http://www.preservationequipme...escent-Light-Filters

Jerry

I used the daylight bulbs on my old layout and going to put them up for the new one. At 6500k it's not really daylight (5600k) but it's near enough. Also I used fixtures that I could adjust the brightness for different moods. Don

I can't imagine why anyone would use fluorescents of any kind in a train room. I have the good fortune to have a skylight in my train room, so I hardly ever have to use artificial light - but if I did, it would be regular tungsten incandescents or halogens. 

I used for many years warm white and switched to Phillips brand natural white and love them, details pop out more in this light.

I use "natural light" compact flourescent now, but am thinking of shifting to LED "bulbs."

Both unfiltered Fluorescent light and natural sunlight fade colors.

The LED Revolution: Not just for locomotive headlights

Probably because they use about 1/3 of the energy of incandescent bulbs?

Let me add.....In my previous train room I used track lighting with standard bulbs.  Two major problems:  heat load in the room (good in the winter, bad in the summer) and very inefficient.  When I was considering lighting for the new train room a lighting engineer determined I would need at least 65 heads to light the room and layout properly.  Each of those heads would contain a 50 watt halogen....and at 3,250 watts whenever I needed to have all of them on, the heat load in the room was tremendous.  Also, it would require additional proper wiring for the lighting circuit which included additional expense.  So...it was easy for me to decide that this time, fluorescent was the way to go.  As LED technology advances I will consider converting.

If you are worried about ultraviolet fading, then use the filters over each bulb.

Alan

Think of it, 3250 watts equates to 11,000 BTU's!  You'd need a one ton A/C unit just to keep up with the heat the light generate!

I find I like the light I get when I mix the warm white with the daylight (one of each is a fixture).  Seems to give off a more natural light.

Happy railroading,

Don

I just had flourescent lights installed in our basement train area two months ago.  Man, what a difference from the old incandescent fixtures!  It's actually enjoyable to work on my layout again.

I've heard many times over the years that flourescents will fade colors, but would have to believe that all the longer these lights are on each day, it would likely take decades before a person would ever notice a difference in the colors on their trains.

Curt

On my 8'x16' layout I have standard incandescent flood type bulbs in track lighting around the layout with two fluorescent shop lights suspended over the layout. I only use the shop lights when I need extra light for when I'm working on the layout. I can adjust the intensity of the track lighting with a dimmer switch to simulate day/evening/night.

15+ years no fading yet...

I must admit, I was not thinking of the heat factor in a very large train room with lots of light fixtures. With 65 spot heads, that must be one big layout. Leavingtracks, did you decide to use the spots with CFL bulbs, or plain overhead tubes?

I am very leery of CFL's after doing some experiments to determine the actual color rendition of various bulbs. I took a whole batch of bulbs and tested them side by side, at night, in a pair of identical 15" globes. I got colors ranging from bright pink through an eerie science-fiction blue. Name-brand tubes are much better controlled and more accurately labeled than CFL's. I recently converted my workshop (adjacent to the train room) from magnetic ballasts to electronic, and one of these days I'm going to switch to some form of natural-light tubes. Any opinions as to what brand and color temperature gives the most natural color rendition would be appreciated. I don't actually use the lights much - the shop has three skylights - but I would like to get the most natural light possible from the fixtures.

We have converted the entire home from the old fashioned incandescent light to the GU24 Twist type. The rest of the lighting is provided by several GE Motion detected LED's which draw less than one of the Engines. Particularly at night.

The train area is in a large windowed space. Once the three trees are removed, lighting should improve.

The total power draw on the home each day is less than 10 kilowatt hour... essentially nothing.

I use fluorescent as well as incandescent spot lamps on my layout. The hard truth  we all must face is that we try to simulate daylight as best we can, but daylight is a killer of paint, wood, plastic and most everything else we can think of.

The next time you see a beat up old gray wooden deck look underneath and the wood is probably as good as new. That top side damage is from the sun not water or anything else.

We can't get away from it, but what we can do is try not to have the light hit your trains directly and what ever you do don't let the sun hit them for to long.

My layout has been lit by fluorescent bulbs since construction: 22 years ago. Nothing

has faded to my knowledge. Don't know what the fuss is about. Two things: my fixtures

have plastic covers (real bears to get off) and my layout is in a separate building

and is lit only when I am actually there (I'm one of those people who doesn't light

a room if I'm not in it, except maybe an "accent" light here and there for navigation at night).

Anyway, I've never knowingly had fluorescent lighting cause any problem in my life,

and I use a combination of warmer and cooler bulbs - more like sunlight, to me.

If I were to build a sleek new train room, I'd use those halogen/led(?) pot lights. Not a

new idea, but they look so good. (I watch too much HGTV.) 

I think this is much ado about nothing.  While I'm sure there is some technical reasons why fluorescent lighting may affect paint, it doesn't happen instantly.  I'm guessing it would take years of constant exposure to start to affect things.  I doubt I'll notice it in my lifetime.

John...you are correct.  For all of the damage that the poster above mentions, there are many other factors that are in play as he states.  If you do research, you will find that the amount of UV that has damaging traits is mainly dependent on the distance the light is from the objects it is illuminating.  After about a 2 foot distance, there is a very rapid reduced effect of the damaging UV.  It is not likely that you are going to have problems and the benefits out weigh the negatives.  AND....you can purchase very reasonably UV tube filters if you feel it necessary.  Locally, they are available at HD and Lowes as well as electrical contractors.  We have a lot of contractors in my area which may explain the availability....you may experience something different in your area.  Screen printers use them quite a lot and a quick internet search will reveal their sources for these tube covers...and yes, they do protect the lights from spreading debris in case of breakage.  Note, I am not talking about the standard protecting covers....

Bottom line:  you are not likely going to expose your layout long enough and close enough to the fluorescent lights to damage the colors or materials under normal usage for the average person.

Alan

MrNabisco,

Any info on LED's ?  It's nice to use 7 or 8 watts and get the brightness of a 60 watt lightbulb, less heat also.

I've been using fluorescents in my train room for over 20 years now with no paint fading.

I have noticed that the DCS Remote Commander doesn't work very well if the base unit is sitting directly underneath a light  

I have some LED strips that I'm going to use to replace one of the florescent lights in our laundry room.  I bought one of the "new" fixtures with the electronic ballast, it's cooking bulbs at an alarming rate!  I'm tired of buying bulbs, so I figured an experiment with a few hundred LED's might be in order to see how that works out.

I'll post some pictures when I get it finished.

There is one other alternative...night time running. And, it's prototypical too!

Well....it seems that this thread has gone another direction other than the original question...but....nothing unusual about that.  By the way, I have 24 eight foot "daylight" fluorescent tubes lighting my layout.  They are around 5 feet above the surface of the layout.  I paid $15.00 each for UV blocking tube covers for a total of $360.00.  They supposedly block out over 90% of the UV being emitted.  I would have spent FAR more on a track lighting system, or can system...not to mention the cost of each light bulb and not including the additional air conditioning system I would have needed to keep the room comfortable!  Granted, their are some folks that have "problems" with fluorescent light so there are alternatives in those cases.

As I mentioned in my second post, the engineer who helped me determine the layout lighting plan, talked at great length about UV and came to the conclusion there were ways to deal with the UV situation. As a matter of fact, several recent studies have concluded that during an 8 hour day under normal exposure from fluorescent lighting, the amount of UV exposure is equivalent to one minute of direct sunlight exposure...using the middle latitudes as a reference here in the United States. 

There is no doubt that over time, UV can cause problems as a lighting source for your layout if the bulbs are too close to the layout.  For most of us, this is not going to be a problem.  By the way, I was one of those folks that was hard to convince to convert over to fluorescent lighting for reasons many of you have stated above but after talking to others with long term experience using this light source, along with web research, I feel comfortable I made the choice that best works for my situation. 

Oh...and so you know....that engineer had to prove to me that I had no worries so he set up his UV meter and we found that the light coming from the windows had more UV than the lamps were emitting at the layout surface!!

Alan

So there!!!

OH MY!!!

It is nice to see that we all haven't lost the art of running a topic into the ground (snore...).

Job well done !!

I have already seen this on the shelving that was constructed recently. A book left on the shelf for storage shows it's new wood underneath and the surrounding wood a weathered color. We don't get too much sun there with the tinted windows and all... but enough to make a big difference in the unpainted wood.

I will have to sit down and ponder how best to treat wood prior to permanently installing it in that room.

Hi all,

My experience has been very similar to Alan's (Leavingtracks).  Are UV and other issues a concern with florescent lighting? Sure.  Are the actual exposures suficient to cause problems in a train room.  No.  BTW, emf from ballasts is also miniscule (less than a CRT TV) and PCB's haven't been used in residential or commercial ballasts since 1979.  The last few industrial ballasts that were allowed to use fully contained PCB's were phased out in 1998.  No ballast of any type purchased today will contain PCB's.

Fortunately, this leaves us with the primary concerns being the fidelity to natural lighting, and the concerns of cost and heat load.  Florescent lighting allows us to produce a lot of light with less heat load and lower longer term operating costs, but with higher up front cost compared to incandescent.  Florescent lighting can also give better fidelity to natural light compared to most incandescent.  Natural outdoor lighting varies with latitude and season, but on average in the US direct sunlight is about 5700˚K.  Cloudy days and shade both result in "bluer" light ranging all the way up to 15,000˚K.  However, there is a phenomenon of the human eye called "color constancy" that changes our perception of color as the lighting intensity decreases.  Since even the brightest layout lighting will be dimmer than the outdoors we need a lower temperature light than true outdoor lighting to make things look the same.  This is why photographers for decades have used 5000˚K florescent lights to reproduce daylight conditions in a studio.  Just as important as temperature in ˚K is CRI - Color Rendering Index.  CRI is rated on a scale of 0-100, with 100 being a perfect mimicking of natural sunlight.  Basically, it means that the bulb puts out light across the entire visible spectrum, not just at a few wavelengths.  At a minimum you want a CRI of 80.  Anything over 90 will be truely beautiful.  Here are couple high quality bulbs that I have used on several projects.

GE EcoLux: 5000K, CRI 86, 2600+ lumens - good value
Phillips Alto: 5000K, CRI 98, 1800+ lumens - the best

Let's look at an example.  Let's say we want to light a 200 square foot train room.  For starters, lets say we want to make it look like full daylight.  If we shoot for a light intensity of about 150 lumens per square foot (about the same as a commercial office or grocery store) it will be nice and bright, but dimmer than real outdoor conditions.  There's a simple method for calculating how many bulbs you need.

sq. ft. of space  X  lumens per sq. ft.  X  2
____________________________________  =  number of bulbs
          lumens per bulb

If we use the GE EcoLux bulbs we'll need 23 4ft tubes to get our target 150 lumens per sq. ft.  A dozen 2-tube fixtures would do nicely.  If we go with the Phillips Alto bulbs we'll need 34 bulbs, or 17 2-tube fixtures.  That works out to less than 800 or 1100 watts respectively.  That's pretty efficient for such a brightly lit room.

While it might always be sunny in Philadelphia, in the rest of the world the sun rises and sets.  If we want to be able to reproduce lighting conditions for morning, afternoon, or evening, we need some additional lighting to go with the florescents.  Lighting for this time of day has a much lower temperature and comes at a lower angle that casts longer shadows.  Aimable fixtures, such as track lighting or cans with a "fish eye" trim, work very well.  Personally, I like cans with a fish eye trim because they reduce stray shadows on the backdrop.  Incandescent bulbs, especially halogens, produce very nice "golden hour" color.  A dozen or more 60 watt spot lights aimed at low angles will cast long shadows with a warm tone with less than 800 watts of energy.  Add a dimmer and you can adjust the color and intensity all the way from afternoon to twilight.  For maximum control you can even get dimmable florescent fixtures (much more money) that allow you to blend the florescent and incandescent lighting.

One last touch to consider is colored accent lighting for sunset, sunrise and night time.  LED and incandescent rope lights in red, green, and blue, can be independently dimmed to create effects along the base of the backdrop.  Here's a short video that shows all of the above in use on the NorthWest Trunk Lines.  The video is a compilation of still photos taken over a 20 minute period as the lighting changes on a fast clock.  All camera settings were held constant, including the white balance.

Dave....very well done explanation with useful information.  This shows how a combination of various kinds of lighting make a spectacular and realistic impact on a layout.  Currently, I am using the Philips Alto bulbs to which you refer.  I am fortunate to have natural morning light for the layout but no current way of simulating sunset.  I would be interested in knowing more on how to you have accomplished the special lighting effects shown in the video...

Thanks,

Alan

Hi Alan,

The sunset effects are produced by red, green, and blue rope lights mounted at the base of the backdrop.  We left a gap between the backdrop and the scenery, so you can't directly see the rope lights when looking at the backdrop.  Each rope is mounted in plastic channel to hold it straight.

Just as television, or the computer screen you are viewing, uses red, green, and blue pixels to reproduce any color, the same can be done with the rope lights.  All you have to do is run each color rope light off a separate dimmer.  Light color areas of the backdrop, like clouds, will readily reflect the colored light.  Darker areas, like trees and buildings will reflect less colored light.  As you dim the rope lights it appears that the sun falling farther and farther below the horizon.

Rope light is readily available in 110v in both incandescent and LED.  The LED rope light costs more but uses about 1/10th the energy.  On the NWTL we needed about 900 feet of rope to run all three colors around the entire perimeter.  That made LED's all but a necessity.  For smaller projects like my suggested 200 sq. ft. layout you can easily use the incandescent ropes.  If you split the rope lights on either end of the room so they run off two sets of dimmers you can even have the sun rise at one end and set at the other.

The other hurtle people run into is how to control the lighting.  If you want everything manual, it's pretty cheap and easy (except for the dimming florescent).  All you need are bunch of 110v wall dimmers.  If you want to coordinate the different lights to automatically mimic time of day you need a more sophisticated control.  On our sample 200 sq. ft. layout you could use something like this Lutron GRAFIK Eye system.  These are definitely a luxury at about $1000 for the control head.  However, the results are pretty nice.

Will this rope light work?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5M-150...;hash=item231d572b83

Rufus -

Agreed; into the ground and halfway to China (oh, gosh! I mentioned CHINA! Where will

this discussion go now?)

Fluorescent lighting - the Buzzing Enemy. (When will Fox News do the story?)

Candles?

Hi SPSF,

Will this rope light work?

I haven't had any luck with any of the RGB ropes.  I've tested samples of several and all require split polarity dimming power supplies.  You'll not that all the adds you find on-line for RGB ropes are also selling power supply and/or controller to drive them.  This makes it very difficult to integrate the rope with your other lighting controls.  I haven't taken a hard look at this in about a year.  Maybe someone has come out with a better controller or an RGB rope with all common anode or cathode wiring.  If not, the individual ropes are still the way to go.