Home >> Hobbies >> Model Railroads

How to Illuminate a Model Railroad

If you intend to create a night scene or simply want to make your model railroad look more realistic, you need to find ways to illuminate your layout. Overhead lighting is just as important as the lighting you use within the layout itself. Model railroaders often use various types of lighting, including lights inside the buildings, street lights and railroad-crossing lights. Each of these lights helps to create the overall look and feel of your model railroad layout.

Things You'll Need

Drill
Small model LED lights
Railroad crossing lights
Model street lights
White glue
Power pack
Wire
Wire cutters
Transformer

Instructions

- 1
  Drill small holes through the layout surface in the location of each of the lights you will be placing on your layout. These holes need to be just big enough to pass wire through. You will need holes under each of the buildings you wish to illuminate and underneath each of the exterior lights, such as railroad crossing lights and street lights.
- 2
  Position each of the LED lights and light-up components onto your model railroad, feeding the wires through the holes you drilled and securing each component in place with a little glue.
- 3
  Attach each set of wires to a pair of contact terminals on the back of the power pack. The power pack provides power to multiple devices at once. The size of your power pack determines how many sets of contact terminals it has and thus, how many components can be attached to it.
- 4
  Secure two pieces of wire to the input contact terminals on the power pack. These contact terminals are typically marked as "input." Attach the other end of these wires to the output contact terminals on the transformer to provide power to the lights.
- 5
  Plug the transformer into the wall.

Model Railroads