The White River and Northern Model Railroad: Editorial

	The N Scale

	Model Railroad

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

There are those who would call me a lunatic; more politely, others might label me a purist. Either way, when it comes to lighting effects, my modeling preferences can border on the fanatical. My excuse: I love model lights. It's a passion I've had since childhood. When I first discovered grain of wheat bulbs, it seemed as if I couldn't buy enough of them.

Admittedly these days I take model lighting to an extreme. My philosophy is to light everything on a layout that is lit in real life (within the realm of practicality). Most of my model vehicles, for instance, have a full compliment of lights, including headlights, brake lights, parking lights and turn signals. One car even has a dome light; another has flashing dashboard indicators.

But this merely scratches the surface; my fanaticism actually runs deeper. Owing to the practicality of their size and longevity, LEDs are very often used for model illumination. The problem is, they do not behave like incandescent light bulbs. When simulating lights that turn on and off frequently, I strive to replicate what the eye (sometimes just barely) perceives in reality.

When an incandescent bulb turns on and off, there is a brief but perceptible period of time when the glow increases and, more noticeably, decreases. By contrast, LEDs turn on and off instantaneously. The subtle effect can make the difference between a good lighting effect and a great one, and in one instance the desire for the highest possible level of realism drove me to create a very unusual device to simulate a chaser light sign: the light bulbs actually rotate across the ends of fiber optics with a motor.

In addition, incandescent lamps produce a characteristic glow. I've found that the best way to reproduce the color temperature of an incandescent lamp is with... an incandescent lamp. Depending on the application, I will often run model bulbs at slightly lower than normal voltage to enhance this quality (with the added benefit of extended life)—building interiors benefit the most from this trick.

For these reasons, I will use microbulbs in lieu of LEDs wherever practical. This leads to a number of modeling challenges, most notably making the bulbs accessible for replacement. In many cases this is simply not possible, so I either live with the occasional burned-out bulb (not the worst thing to have happen, since it does occur in real life), or bite the bullet and rebuild the model. Where microbulbs are completely impractical, I resort to LEDs, much as I find their effect slightly artificial-feeling.

But lately, a curious ironic twist is emerging: at an accelerating rate, LEDs are replacing incandescent bulbs in the 1:1 world. Thus, real life is "imitating" models that use LEDs instead of bulbs. A prime example: traffic signals. When I first started modeling stop lights, I reluctantly used LEDs because there was simply no practical way of employing microbulbs without creating unrealistic fixtures. Subsequently, LEDs have begun turning up in real stoplights, so now my models are right on the money!

Today, lights on commercial vehicles, particularly tractor trailers, are being replaced with LEDs, where their virtual indestructibility and longevity make them perfectly suited for rough treatment. They are showing up in automobile brake lights as well, although not as quickly. The hottest craze, however, seems to be police and emergency vehicle lights. Having grown up in the era of the incandescent lamp, it's a bit disconcerting to see the artificial-looking, even toy-like flickering of modern emergency vehicles in action. But, the benefit of this trend is that (assuming one is modeling in the present) it's now much easier to model.

At one time, automobile headlights were almost universally the same bright but still warm incandescent color. I simulated this by coupling microbulbs to fiber optics (the latter nicely replicating the focused beam that real headlights produce). Nowadays, many cars are fitted with quartz-halogen lamps that blaze with an intense blue-white. Guess what? White LEDs have a very similar color temperature, so they are ideal for late-model car headlights. And now I can feel better about switching to red LEDs for their brake lights, too.

This brings to mind a favorite lighting effect, one that I've seen change over the course of four decades of modeling: street lights. As a youngster, many of them (particularly those in quiet little residential neighborhoods) were still incandescent, and to this day I prefer the light they cast on the ground. As I grew up, this soft, warm glow was gradually replaced by the bright blue-white of mercury-vapor lamps, which can be simulated to perfection with white LEDs. However, I've yet to determine how to mimic the strange yellow-orange of the now more-popular sodium-vapor lamps; perhaps white LEDs with a custom-mixed transparent paint overlay will do-I'll have to take some time to do some experimenting.

The bottom line is that, as technology is gradually making incandescent lights obsolete, it's also making the task of modeling realistic lighting effects a little easier, because of the new products available both in real life and to modelers. This will put smiles on the faces of purists like me... all three of us.

—David K. Smith, 7 November 2006

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