Lighting a model railway layout

[Theodore3815]

You are a wonderful lot. Thank you.

 

The layout is called Disentis/Mustair and it sits at 1133m in the south east of Switzerland.

 

The station is the meeting point of two railways and they have different technical solutions to running trains so there is quite a lot of shunting.

 

We will be setting up a website but there isn`t one presently.

 

I have pictures of the layout but I don`t know if I can post them here. If one of you would like to give me a private email address I`ll send photos that could then be shared.

 

I have been looking a lot at the DMX protocol and wondered what sort of size controller would be needed to match my ambition. However I don`t understand whether DMX can drive small strings of LED RGB strips as well as PAR LED lamps from the same controller.

 

I`m sure you all realise I`m not comfortable with the terminology you are using - it is all new to me so I am learning fast (hopefully). However this has been a persistent ambition of mine for a very long time and I`m feeling some great vibes and movement towards my goal.

 

Please keep hurling ideas and suggestions!!!

 

Bernard

[timsabre]

Hi Bernard, for photos you need to get them online somewhere (flickr or Instagram or something) then put a link to them.

 

DMX is just a remote control system. You can set the level of 512 different lights, but you need dimmers (for halogen lights) or drivers (for led tape) which are controlled by the DMX commands to actually control the power.

 

Proper LED stage lighting fixtures have the drivers built in so you just connect power and DMX and you can control them.

[J Pearce]

Is this layout an installed layout or a 'touring layout' that will visit exhibitions? If the latter think carefully about power consumption, and warn hosts in advance of your power needs - it looks like you'll be taking quite a bit more than the average layout (sneaky kettles excepted).

[Theodore3815]

Yes, it is an exhibition layout. I was hoping to use LEDs as the basic light source due to their minimal weight and less power consumption. I was hoping to use low voltage ones powered from the mains via switch-mode power supplies.

 

I have no idea whatsoever about what you are talking about re illicit kettles. I thought that was an urban myth on the exhibition circuit. Yer right!.

 

If I understand the messages of today correctly, I can use a mixture of small strings of RGB LED strips like those sold by Maplin, I can control several strings independently to create the different colours of dawn, I could use a moving lamp to represent the sun rising in the sky (but don`t know what lamp to use for that yet) and then I could switch to bigger lamps but perhaps not as big as PAR56 in the roof of the model for the main daylight sequence of either dismal day or bright sunlight. Moving shadow might be problematic.

 

So my next question is - do I need a DMX controller to use as the setting up and control mechanism or can I use a laptop already to hand.

 

Tyro Bernard

[Jivemaster]

There are lots of effects that you cannot create easily as they come from the natural and variable atmosphere each day and from the sheer scale of the distances involved!

 

IMO you could decide on an adequate solar track above your landscape for a special or generic season of the year then fit a (curtain!)track along that solar track and physically drive a big LED chip across the track with a slow motor. Or you could fit the solar track with individually addressable LEDs and send a very slow DMX pattern to create a small constantly crossfading group of lit LEDs moving to time.

 

DMX gives you 512 addresses. As RGBAW this would use a lot of channels so you's probably need 4 - 8 universes. Fitting the "solar arc" with LEDs with warm, white and cool in the places that represent dawn, morning and noon may let you get away with 512 LEDs

[Weir69]

Being a railway modeler myself I was interested in this topic. I remembered reading about some who had attempted a similar project and a little digging turned up this:

http://vikaschander.com/layout-lighting

 

Well worth a look, It might help you visualise what others are saying about DMX and so on.

[Emmien]

I can use a mixture of small strings of RGB LED strips like those sold by Maplin

 

I have seen the strips in maplins, and I don't know who is buying them!

£40 for a 5m strip, little white box and cheap power supply.

 

 

You can get the same kit on Ebay for £16.

Ebay is probably one of the best places to get the controller to connect the strip to as well.

A device such as this for each section of strip would work.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-Channel-DMX-512-Digital-LED-Controller-for-RGB-5050-3528-LED-Strip-Light-V2N7-/222057078921?hash=item33b3a22089:g:FZAAAOSwZQxW6oPf

[paulears]

Mapilns has never been cheap, just convenient for emergencies.

 

To Bernard.

 

Exhibitions and other similar events are a topic we discuss regularly, where people's electricity needs are done in advance, and then it goes wrong when somebody asking for just 5amps blacks the place out by sneaking in a kettle or other cup of tea making machine, plugging it in and popping the breakers. Not an urban myth. Indeed, quite common.

[mikienorth]

Bernard.

 

DMX Controller. Search Chamsys MagicQ, download the program appropriate for your computer and see if you can make any sense of what it wants you to do, there are tutorials online I'm sure. This is a laptop based program giving you a very powerful DMX controller, that to see an output from when you get to that point, it costs £10 or £75 for the bit which goes between your laptop and the lights. This program is something we here use professionally, and it's free to use on your laptop, so you have a chance to see if you can make sense of it before you buy the parts to make the control work.

 

The only advice I can give you in achieving the look you want is experimentation. Start with the LED tape, as you have that. Use the supplied controllers, with the remote control, and see if you can mix colours yourself that will approximate dawn/dusk/daylight.

Place these tapes in various places above and around the layout and see if you can begin to get the look you want. Try covering sections of the tape and see if the shadows and light levels can be controlled that way at all before you cut it into bits and invest in more controllers.

 

Acquire a Par56, or a stage light and see what they can do for you.

Try dimming a downlighter bulb and see if it can approximate a rising sun.

 

Try these things, if need be, buy one or two of the things you need, experiment quickly and send them back if they don't work out, to avoid wasting money.

 

IF you get a solution thats beginning to work looks wise, buy the control system at that point. So A DMX Dongle for the laptop, ONE DMX controller for the LED stuff, and get that working together in a way you can manage before you buy more. (Tip, controlling LED from a chamsys is much the same as controlling a dimmer in as much as it's all intensity, or brightness based, buy the cheapest options and make sure you can use it effectively before moving on to buying loads)

 

But you've a bundle of ideas, we may have overloaded you with conflicting ones, it's now down to you to see what you like best. I'd suggest keeping moving parts to a minimum and trying to use more lights in more positions to give shadow movement. I may upload a strange video for you to watch of shadow play at a model scale. I saw it in a Japanese museum and it's a dream to take it life size one day. But I need cliffs, and a funding body with vision...

 

Anyway, I've digressed.

 

Secret Kettles. Just because it's a 13A socket on the floor in your exhibition area doesn't mean there's a full 13A for you to use. We plan power around what you tell us the exhibit requires to run, so if in your paperwork you say "The layout draws a load of 5A when running, and plugs into one 13A socket" We'll maybe share a 16A supply with you and the guy next door that asked for 10. Or a group of 5A supplies shares a 32A supply say. If you're all running your layouts, and 6 of you are going at once, loading the 32A supply up to 30A, and one of you thinks "I'll have a brew" then the fuse looking after all 6 of you will go, and voila! angry neighbours, who can't even get a cup of tea off you by way of an apology....

 

Bane of our lives when power planning, undeclared loads.

[Theodore3815]

Super, thanks again.

 

I`m off for more research!!!!!

 

Bernard

[marktownend]

Having visited Miniatur Wunderland last week and having a vague recollection of seeing this thread, I can add that the newer sections there now use LEDs rather than florries for the lighting. Think it was a basic mix of white, red and blue. I didn't study it closely (partly as I was a little frazzled at the whole experience) but I believe they were just aiming for a general wash of lighting rather than to create shadows.

 

Bernard (if you see this!) - I think you need to get yourself to Hamburg to have a look yourself...

[DonkiDonki]

Is it an option to project onto a wall behind the track and use video projection?

 

With that you could even take a trip to the location you are recreating and film dawn to dusk in time lapse to give you the genuine view.

 

Then just use some subtle lighting on the track to compliment the video.