Lighting The Upstairs Train

Seeing a nicely lighted model railroad at night is a whole new experience.  It's like having a second layout!

One small (50 Watts ) transformer (#1-1/2) powers most of the lighting on the layout.  I have connected the lights to the variable post so I can control the brightness of the lights.  At the top of the picture you see the light tower and town lighted, and the bridge house at the right.  Union Station at the bottom is also lighted, but you can't tell it in this picture.

In the town, each building has a small light socket and bulb, most of which came from a robot that a friend and I built for the 1958 high school science fair.

The trains, of course, light up when there is power to the track they are on.  It took me a while to figure out how to get them all lit up without any engines moving so I could take these pictures.  The secret lies in the Zone Mode described on the Operations page: move each train to the outgoing boundary of its zone so the engine has no power but the cars do.  Here you see the Missouri Pacfiic passenger set on the red line, the Comet on the green line, and the Clipper on the siding by Union Station. The brightest lights, of course, are on the transformers and switch controls in the control panel.

Here's a shot from the other direction, from the south, with the town in the foreground.  I see I have a street light out; I hadn't noticed that when I took the picture.  I'll have to check into that. In the upper right, you see Union Station lighted, just past the lighted Comet and Clipper passenger trains. A second small (40 Watts) transformer (#22004) powers the aircraft beacons, oil derrick, and water tower that do not want to be on variable power like the other lighting.  None of them are visible in the first picture, but you can see one beacon, the water tower, and oil derrick in the upper left corner of this one.

At night, even a small town along the tracks has a special magic.

Union Station, the New Haven Clipper, and the Missouri Pacific streamliners gleam in the night.

If you or your friends have some American Flyer trains and would like them to go to a nice home where they'll be loved and cared for, this is the place!  Email me: theupstairstrain@yahoo.com.

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