NKP-ish

[nickelplate759]

Progress on the actual layout -
The backdrop is up!    I asked for advice here: https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=38432.0
I went with 1/8" Masonite, coved in all corners.   Here's what it looks like in primer:  [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

And here it is painted:
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Lighting isn't right yet - these are just the room lights.

George

[nickelplate759]

As you can tell from the backdrop photos in the previous post, I need to adjust the lighting.   The "closet" area has some random cheap LED light in it that looks blueish and has poor color rendering.   The main room has Cree LED 3500K recessed ceiling flood lights that are 93-ish CRI.
I have a circuit in place to install  track lighting for the  layout.  The question is - what color?
Whatever I use will be LED.

It's easy to find 2700k lights, but they're awfully yellow.   It's easy to find 5000k lights (a.k.a. Daylight), but I worry if they would be too blue.
It's not easy to find 3500k lights without spending $100+ per light..

What do folks like (for color) and why?  I know Halogens are nice, but I don't want to use them.

George

[davefoxx]

I can sympathize.  I bought my first LED bulb several months ago, and I leaned on the daylight side of color.  It was blue.  So blue that I went and bought a new bulb to replace that one, since it was in the main hallway between the kitchen and family room.  It was terrible lighting under those circumstances.

Reading your post made me wonder (because I have no experience in lighting) what would happen if you mixed the 2700K and 5000K lights?  Hopefully not yellow and blue makes green.    Seriously, I don't even know if you can mix the different type bulbs within a fixture, but, if your layout room is like mine, there's adjacent fixtures where perhaps this could fly.  I dunno.

DFF

[nickelplate759]

You can mix them if they are very small  and close to each other - like individual LEDs within a fixture (I'm told that this is what the Cree recessed flood lights do) - but if you are using regular-sized bulbs it ends up looking weird.  Not green (!) but still weird.
George

[eric220]

I use the 5,000 k daylight bulbs, and I agree, they're too blue for normal room lighting, where we're used to a softer light. I think they're great for the train room. I tend to get truer whites when I'm photographing against a white backdrop.

[C855B]

Familiar with 5000K lighting from years in the printing industry, I was biased against 5000K ("too blue, too harsh!") when I was building-out the lighting system on the GC&W. The general lighting ("house lights") is ~3500K, and that seemed a good compromise. The first two rows of white layout spotlights (of eight rows of six) were 3000K 40° floods.

Frankly, I was not happy. Appearance was dim and diffused, and colors weren't right. From the same supplier, I ordered a test batch of 3000K 25° spots, and 5000K 40° floods and 25° spots. Much to my surprise, the contrast - pun intended - was clear, and I went with the 5000K spots.

The 5000K lighting appears "brighter" and "crisper" to my eye for the same lumen rating vs. 3000K. So much so that I programmed a color blend with the effects spots (multicolor LED theater lights) that mimics the 5000K, and with those plus the white spots, it looks great. So like Eric said, you might not want 5000K in the living room or at the dining table, but, my gosh, it's great for the layout.

[nickelplate759]

What about CRI?   90+ CRI LED track lights (or LED bulbs for the same) are relatively scarce and/or expensive ($60+ per head).        85-ish CRI bulbs at 5000K are pretty easy to find.  Is 85 good enough for the layout?

[C855B]

Definitely. CRI is supposedly only 80 on the 5000K spots I have, but it was spec'ed at 80 on the 3000Ks, and there was a world of difference between the two, with the 3000K giving a discernible yellow cast to everything. OTOH, I have have to wonder if one or the other (or both) is wrong, and somebody just cut-and-pasted on the spec sheets.

Personally I don't think the difference between ~85 and ~90 is going to be perceptible, especially not in MRR applications. If you were in an absolute color fidelity situation such as I was in the print shop (original vs. proofs vs. on-press), it might be noticed, but that's the far extreme. I suspect that is where the extra cost of the 90+ CRI bulbs is, meeting the verified specs intended for color matching professionals.

[nickelplate759]

I can sympathize.  I bought my first LED bulb several months ago, and I leaned on the daylight side of color.  It was blue.  So blue that I went and bought a new bulb to replace that one, since it was in the main hallway between the kitchen and family room.  It was terrible lighting under those circumstances.

Reading your post made me wonder (because I have no experience in lighting) what would happen if you mixed the 2700K and 5000K lights?  Hopefully not yellow and blue makes green.    Seriously, I don't even know if you can mix the different type bulbs within a fixture, but, if your layout room is like mine, there's adjacent fixtures where perhaps this could fly.  I dunno.

DFF

By the way, in lighting, it's different:  Red + Green = Yellow,     Blue + Yellow = Blue + (Red + Green) = White (!)

[C855B]

By the way, in lighting, it's different:  Red + Green = Yellow,     Blue + Yellow = Blue + (Red + Green) = White (!)

Funny you should say that...

RGB in the practical sense seems to have a poor gamut and is especially deficient in rendering yellow. I was looking at a handful of CIE plots the other day for RGB panel fixtures, and they were, in a word, awful. I saw that for myself in testing RGB stage fixtures a few years ago, the target being reasonable expression of yellows and oranges, and white. It just wasn't happening.

Right about that time there were new, expensive lights with RGBA (A = amber) and RGBW (W=white, usually in the 5-6000K range), the amber obviously added to make up for the yellow problem, and white in attempts to tone down the pinkish cast of the RGB white. The breakthrough came only a couple of years ago with RGBAW and RGBAW+UV fixtures available at realistic prices. I installed several of the latter, and found that the W+UV makes all the difference, especially with R, G and B at less than full values and used to adjust the color temperature.

Anyway, in David's situation I would actually want to avoid a mix of color temperatures. It doesn't average out, unfortunately, once you consider shadows. Here's a picture from my layout earlier this year, and you can see the color shift just from my head shadowing one of the fixtures which did not at the time have the 5000K or the simulation:

[Chris333]

I like 4500-5500k lights around my N scale layout. Recently I bought a 4' LED shop light for a small layout that was 4000k and it isn't that bad.
https://www.menards.com/main/lighting-ceiling-fans/indoor-lighting/shop-all-lighting/smart-electrician-3200-lumens-led-shop-light/p-1455974530435.htm

When I bought, it was on sale for $24.99 with a $10.00 rebate, so $14.99.

[jdcolombo]

Hi George.

Late to this thread, but welcome to the NKP layout club!

Some random thoughts.

1.  The NKP had a lot of tunnels in southeastern Ohio on the former Wheeling.  Pretend you're on the Wheeling and the engine terminal is Brewster.  Tunnels and grades everywhere, and Berks worked that line up to 1957 when the C-C SD9's and RSD12's finished them off.

2.  I'm not sure I'd worry much about lighting.  I have 3500K LEDs on my layout, which look nice in person.  In photos, you just adjust the white balance to 3500K and all is well.  I think the key is to have all the layout lights the same color temperature and CRI.

3.  One of these days I'll replace the Walthers coaling tower on my layout at Bellevue with a proper cylindrical one.  Right now, no one manufactures a 4-track cylindrical - the tower at Bellevue was a 4-track tower (two on the inside, two on the outside).  I've thought about trying to 3D print this partly because of the details needed - the skip hoist to the top, the coaling chutes, etc.  The nice thing about the Walthers tower is that it had a ton of these details and is very realistic when assembled properly and weathered - and it's a 4-track tower, which I needed at Bellevue.

Keep the photos of progress coming!

John C.

[nickelplate759]

I've thought about focusing on the Wheeling side of things,especially since I like lot of the power common to that route (SD9s, 2-6-6-2s, RS-12, ....) and have a figurative TON of NKP hoppers (maybe 60?  The folks at Bluford Shops aren't helping that any...) but I also like the Chicago-NY passenger trains that ran through northern Ohio.   

I guess I'll either compromise or fudge a bit.

George

[nickelplate759]

Benchwork is going up!
Here's one end (over my workbench):
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And here's the opposite side (with wildlife):
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George

[davefoxx]

Is Chessie taking over the NKP now?  We know how well that worked for the WM?   Right, @wm3798? 

DFF