Brightening Up the Space - Adding More Light

One of the downsides of having a large layout and the large room that goes with it, is that you end up with a bunch of model railroad to light up so you can see. Even with natural light coming from your windows (and thankfully, I have 4 windows plus 2 glass inset doors), it can be a challenge to get those back corners sufficiently bright.

Having task focused lighting while you are working on something is easy - bring over a flashlight/lantern/etc and done.

However, having enough lighting for operating and photography with or without the sun can be a challenge.

The builder installed a couple of pot lights around the room, but even with 125W bulbs, we couldn't even hit dive bar levels of illumination.

Check out the first lighting post I put together a few years back for some more information.

I had three areas that needed help - the staging room, the back corner behind the helix, and the area at South Doswell.

Staging room got a T fitting and then a 4' and an 8' track added. Moved some heads around, plus added another 4 of them. Have space to add some more if I think it needs it after I get used to the new level of light.

Staging yard. Note the heads off to the far right to help brighten up the yard throats.

South Doswell was lit by a combination of what was installed over Hamilton and on the peninsula end between there and XR.

Here, working from the original 4' track, I added another 4' track at an angle that looked good (using a flexible coupler) and then terminated in a 8' track running parallel to the track at South Doswell (and the crossover I installed there last year).

Trying to source the hardware all the same color is tough. As I don't care if it matches or not, you can see the mix and match effect.

The far back corner was one of the spots where I initially tested out the track light idea. I put the original 4' bar at an angle, thinking it would be enough.

Not even close, and having to add a bar inside the peninsulas meant it had to be removed and repositioned.

I added another L angle and tacked on another 4' bar. It is the bar in the back of this picture that is running side to side.

This corner is much better than before.

A few more shots can be found in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org.