Lighting at Model Railroad Shows

Are you serious?

Having done trade shows for years and years and . . . the very fact that you took photos and videos means that they had SUPERB lighting!    MOST venues are very poorly lit.  At commercial tradeshows the vendors provide their own lighting for their booths.  The examples you show are quite impressive as far as lighting is concerned. 

Our local club just had a major train show Thanksgiving weekend, for this show the vendors said they had slow sales, but the event had HUGE crowds, and I would say the slow sales had nothing to do with lighting.  Russ

Well, I guess my eyes are worse than I realized!

The Brown Hall at York has the worst lighting.  You almost need a head lamp to look at the items on the tables.

Starting at :08 in Turlock 2 you get a good look at the lighting fixtures. They appear to commercial grade track lights. I would venture a guess that were in the 4000k-5000k range cfls or leds. You also see the train in a dark spot just before it turns.

perhaps the daylight color of the lights threw you off. They are very directional also. if they were angled to project across instead of down it would have helped.

Not a lot of bounce, so some shadow areas are there.

Definitely not poor lighting.

I would like to jump in on Alan's topic and expand it to clubs who hold open houses as well.  I have visited a club who has an excellent layout, but has in my opinion, sub-par lighting.  I am 58 and wear tri-focals.  While not as bad as many, my eyes have definitely aged.  I love to see the scenery and the trains this club presents, but my eyes get tired quickly and I get a head ache.  The reason is the lighting.  I have mentioned this to club members while complimenting their layout and club.  Looking at the layout and ceiling, it would probably be difficult to upgrade the lighting with their expansive layout in place.  I wouldn't want them to risk dropping something or falling into their layout.  I do wonder how they change bulbs in the lights they have.  (Very carefully, I would say)

I do not mean to criticize them, it is just a call to everyone that the more light, the better.  As I plan my next layout in a room our grown daughter will be vacating someday soon (I hope), I know I need to add more light to that room before building.

I agree about lighting being important. I think a lot of the complaining about the Gold Polar Express at the York show was a result of the crummy mercury vapor lights in the Orange hall. Being an event photog I know how often those things color cycle each minute.

Best thing is if you are a vendor and you want your product to look its best is to bring sufficient quality lighting for your display

When I still had my commercial layout building business we always installed two lighting systems.  Work Lights and Show Lights.  The work lights were just that, very bright expansive lighting so you could see what you were working on.  The kind of lighting that would be very nice at a show with vendors.  The show lights were usually color corrected 'daylight' bulbs and most were directional so as to actually have some shadows and highlighted accents, the kind of lighting that would be nice at shows for the modular layouts.  MOST event centers are multi-pupose and therefore 'try' and cater to everyones wishes, however the older the facility the older the lighting scheme and therefore the less likely to have 'adequate' lighting.  The Medford show we just had, had 'almost' good lighting as the lights are mounted on a very high ceiling.  It wasn't dark as you could safely navigate the modules and the vendors but not what I would call 'artistic' either!    Russ