Fit 3D-printed lights
George Dent tries out a new set of working lamps by installing them on the exterior of a Hornby diesel depot.
George Dent installs a new set of working lights on a Hornby diesel depot.
Working lights certainly help to bring a layout to life and can look particularly effective in depot or yard scenarios. A key feature of modern industrial and railway infrastructure is the prevalence of powerful floodlights, to meet safety and security requirements. A new set of working wall-mounted floodlights is available from Scale Model Scenery and they’re perfect for a contemporary industrial, commercial or railway location. 3D-printed, they come fully assembled and ready to install, and with the micro LEDS being encased in a tough, matt black material there’s no need for painting either. Other than drilling mounting holes into your model building and passing the ultra-fine wires through the baseboard, all that’s left to do is connect them to a power source. Full wiring
instructions are supplied and the lamps can be powered directly from a 3V supply (such as two 1.5V AA batteries) or a standard 12-16V AC or DC supply. If using the latter, the supplied resistors must be connected to each positive (red) cable. Designed primarily with Gaugemaster’s Fordhampton diesel depot kit in mind, they’ll look equally at home on any industrial building. In order to test the lamps, I decided to fit them to Hornby’s venerable diesel maintenance depot kit (MR212), with very little modification work required. In fact, it took longer to solder up the power connections than it did to fit the lamps. Once the 12V power was applied, the floodlights emitted a pleasing amount of light with a cool, blue-white hue, so typical of modern lighting. For modellers of 20th century-based layouts, an alternative set of orange LEDS is also available, to mimic the more traditional sodium-type lighting. Offering great value and ease of installation, these floodlights look excellent. Indeed, I’m now moved to install more lighting on this depot scene. That’s the trouble with adding lights – you soon want to add more!