And then there was light...

I wanted to be a bit fancy with lighting... Ideas of potentially adding cloud movement, and simulate sunset and sunrise would have added additional interest to the layout, and I had a few ideas on how I might have produced such effects. Using DMX controlled DJ lights was the avenue I was going to go down. I found a few suitable lights but unfortunately they never gave the correct effect and were expensive. The "white" light produced from RGB LEDs is simply not white enough, producing an unnatural blue tinge, but on the other hand it had the advantage of creating an orange light for sunset and sunrise. However I could not control each LED so, producing moving clouds was out the question. The second DMX light I tried was a light bar with 10 individual warm white LEDs, now I could produce the cloud effect, but the down side was each LED produced a spot effect on the layout, not ideal. So to the compromise...

LEDs were the way to go forward, no heat, low power, and long life, but now I had to put aside my dreams of lighting effects and make do with a static light. After a quick search on ebay, I came across some LED rigid light bars (used for under cabinet lighting) - when buying on ebay be warned they may not always be what you expected. They come in various sizes and colours (RGB, warm white, cool white etc), we went for a 1 meter long warm white LED rigid bar, however testing the light out on the layout, we soon realised we needed another one as it was not bright enough at the distance we are hanging them, and it did not cover all of the layout.
The lights are screwed to 6ft wooden battens (painted black), with hand made aluminium ends to stop the bars slipping off  the overhead rigging. This means they can be placed at different distances to produce an even light over the layout. Both lights are powered from a 12v power adapter.

Overall It produces a convincing warm summers day light, over Cliddesden.

Ed