Recesssed vs. Track lighting

I used both for my layout.  My room is 16 feet wide.  Six feet has a dropped bulkhead that hides the heat ducts and pipes.  The track lighting is installed under a bulkhead where there is no room for recessed lighting.  The other nine foot section has a suspended ceiling that is about ten inches higher.  I recessed three 4' florescent lights above the tiles.  I have installed the can lights in another section of my basement.  These are not had to install.  Make sure you check the insulation contact label on the cans.  You can buy a circle cutter to cut the ceiling tiles.  Your wire size should be ok.  One thing you might look at is the width of your layout.  My layout is set up for a 3' benck and at 41" it's hard to reach the back wall in some of the areas.

 

Jim Miller

Havre de Grace 

There are a few photo's on one of my posts.  "I've been working on the Railroad room 2"  I've done a little more work since these pictures were posted and need to update the post.

 

Jim Miller

Here is a thread from a few months back that does some detail on track lighting.  Click on the underlined phrase to link.

 

 

MIke,

Thanks for the link.

 It looks like you do not have the intense "arcs" of light from the track lights on the wall that REVITUPFASTER seems to show in his pictures near the bottom of your post.

What is the center to center distance on the recessed lights?

I don't have any shelves to illuminate, just the layout.

Rich

LIONEL6457

Recessed is good if you want a more dependable installation, track lighting is good for being move-able but may cast shadows. The other down side to track lighting is that the tracks get dirty after a few years, so if you add more track lights they may not get power.

To figuire out what size wire to use you need to figuire out how many light bulbs of each wattage you are going to use and divide by the operating voltage. On a 120 volt circuit a 15 amp breaker should be able to do around 1700 watts of lights, leaving 100 watts for heat factor on the wires.

 

Lee Fritz

I use a combination of LED flood and spot lights. Thet are very cheap on eBay and each comes with a remote control. They can change to many different colors. It changes the entire mood of the layout with the different colors; there is a bright white and they are somewhat dimable. 

They are also nice for highlights if you already have lighting. You can't go wrong with these. The separate spot lights make different areas pop; blue for instance on water. 

The 120v times 15a is correct but you should not exceed 80% of that number which is 1440 watts.  If you use a 20a circuit & #12AWG max load is 1920 watts.

 

Ken

Just to clarify, in the pic, I have the tracks set at "Max", the arc affect can easily be softened by either lowering the intensity setting, or by adjusting the light head to a different angle.

 

In my set-up, I have 8 track fixtures, with 5 on one dimmer, and 3 on another. Lots of opportunities for variation. I thought about the recessed type, but I liked the idea of being able to adjust the head to different angles. For general lighting, I also have 8 recessed flourescent 4ft double tube jobs. I originally thought the 8 recessed fixtures was going to be a bit of overkill, but not the case, I'm glad I didn't use less.

 

REV

We did a ton of research on this topic before we put the lights up in the layout room. The biggest difference, no matter what type of lighting you choose, is the the BULB itself. Color, heat, energy consumption, dimmer or no dimmer, and brightness.

 

As far as flexibility/range of motion for adjusting the "placement" of light.... there's nothing more flexible than track lighting.

 

If you use track lighting....pick the right head, or else you are limited to what type of bulbs you can use:

 

 I used the head on the left for my switching layout. Obviously I was limited to a PAR30 size of bulb. For the big layout we chose the can on the right so we could use the biggest bulb allowed by the head. Max wattage allowed on those is 120 watts.

 

PAR30 Halogen vs PAR38 Dimmable CFL... I can't begin to tell you the difference in energy consumption and heated generated by the 2 bulbs. The CFL is 19 watts, 75 watt equilvant, 5000k temp range which is a very bright clear light...compared to a 3800k warm yellowish tone.

 

The standard incandescents lights (like kitchen or living room warm yellowish looking bulbs). They generated so much heat in the room, we couldn't have all of them on at the same time and work in there. Not to mention the electric meter turned so fast it was just a blur.

 

Switched to a dimmable CFL... $18 a bulb...yes $18 EACH and there is 30 of them. We spared no expense on lighting the room, and also added dimmer switches to each of the circuits. In one of the recent CTT magazines, it listed not having a dimmer switch as 1 of the Top 10 mistakes people make when building big layouts.

 

No matter type of lighting you choose, don't go the cheapest route....and put dimmer switchers in.

There are two shapes of bulbs that fit the Laidoffsick's fixtures.  The PAR30 has a parabolic reflector and produces a spotlight beam and would produce a sharp boundary.  The other bulb is a BR30 which has a more spherical reflector which doesn't concentrate the beam and produce the sharp boundaries.

 

Right now I am using a mixture of CFL and LED BR30 and bare CFL bulbs (what ever was available).  I have only one ceiling electrical box so I was cautious about the power too. 

 

Jan

When i used halogens on my switchin layout, I used spot and flood lights. I do NOT like.the spot lights at all because of that harsh line they create. The flood lights are a much better choice. The dimmable CFL's we used on fhe big layout are all FLOOD type bulbs. Very broad with no harsh lines.

When using a dimmer make sure it is big enough for the total wattage. In one room I have 12 lights on 1 switch and it was way over the load for a regular switch. I ended up paying almost $100 for the correct dimmer.