Low cost lighting optons for turntable/roundhouse area

You could make your own street\lamp pole lights out of brass tubing about 1/8 thick and use something round to make a bend at top. At Home Depot you can get rubber suction cups about an inch wide or so they have a hook on end pull it off use a drill to make a hole large enough for a HO 12 volt bulb. Then some 22 gauge wire and some heat shrink tubing and wire to a power source. Or if you have a 3-9 volt AC adapter lying around will give off less bright light. Hope this helps some $oo

I have mounted some LED floodlights and spotlights to my ceiling. You can get them on eBay from China in the $15 range shipped. I found that I can reduce my layout lights quite a bit and get a great effect with the LED lighting the area and the layout individual lights more as accents. Best part is they are remote controlled and can be dimmed somewhat. They also have many color choices changed by remote also. At night I run red if I want layout lights to be pronounced. Blue is a great color for getting a at dusk look. There is also a bright white color I use when working on layout details. Just an option I thought I'd throw out there. 

Thanks for the replies.  I will have to pick up some tubing and give that a shot.  How hard is it to bend smoothly ?

 

I still have the old flourescent lights on the ceiling, a holdover from when I used it as a workshop.  Replacing those lights which something more suitable,is definitely on the list.  I never thought about using led lamps on the ceiling.  

 

Thanks for the input.

Ed

Ed! Definetly check LED floods and spots out. Grab one on the bay for ten bucks, wait two weeks till it ships to you, and experiment. It's amazing how much you can control the "mood" of your train sessions with them. It almost looks like a different layout under different colors. You can't go wrong at the price. 

To bend the tubing if you have some wood dowel 1/2"-1"
You shouldn't have any issues as its really soft if you don't find the brass you can use the alluminum tubing also.
Let us know how it works for you and also the led light
As for $10 a bargain compared to lamp size led bulbs.

$oo