Lights

My layout has been designed with the intent of looking good at night. I've added details like streetlights, signals, and white LED headlights. Even some buildings are lit.

After shutting off the lights, though, the building gets quite dark. While the layout looks quite good, there's very little ambient light to see with. Turning on lights in the next room kinda works, but it doesn't look good.

My solution is rope lights. Menards has 48' of rope light for about $20. One strand has taken care of most of my layout, and another will give me plenty of excess. The lights come with clips for installation onto a wood surface, or zip ties for something like a iron railing. They're incandescent, so they do get warm.

Initially, I installed the rope lights on blocks mounted so the lights would be slightly underneath the edge of the fascia. This would allow light to shine from both the front and the bottom of the light. However, this turned out to be too bright. The effect created was one more of twilight and less of night. By moving the lights up, so light shines only out of the bottom, the aisles are well lit but the effect is night.

One of the few remaining issues now is that of light leaks. The fascia is not sealed against the foam on some pieces of the layout, so light leaks through. An old panel location has two large holes that are easily ignored in the daytime, but with the rope lights it's obvious where it was. To paraphrase Dr. Malcom in Jurassic Park, "[Light] breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, ah, well, there it is." (Quote copied from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/quotes, except of course the word indicated with brackets.)

The rope lights install easily, look great, and provide a much needed improvement in safety. If (when?) I build another layout, I'll definitely install them again.