Here is the idea. I will have a series of duplex outlets installed around the layout room. I break the tab on each outlet so each half can be on a separate circuit. Maybe top outlet for daytime lighting, bottom outlet for nighttime lighting. The outlets would be connected to a three way switch via 3 conductor Romex. I use the traveler legs of the 3 way switch to alternate hot to either the top or bottom outlet. Of course neutral would still connect to each outlet, and ground would connect to each outlet and switch. I found a switched outlet diagram online for a single pole switch, I'm wondering if my idea makes sense, anything that sounds wrong? Can I use a different type of common household switch that would also have a center off? Perhaps I could use this three way duplex toggle switch. where the single pole side would simply be an on/off for the dual lighting circuit.
For safety and insurance purposes I would stick with items that are made for 120 volt home wiring. You can break the tab on the recepticle to have two circuits and there are switches that have two SPST switches built in that will fit into a single wall box. That switch is the one I refer to. One step in that article that I feel was left out is to wrap plastic electrical tape around the recepticle and switch to add a little more insulation on those screws. If you have doubts about your work get an electrician to do it. Layout wiring is quite a bit different than the lethal home wiring.
Why are you doing this, again? Seriously, I'd simply unplug the daytime lights and plug in the nighttime lights. Or, use power strips and switch as needed. There's a reason electricians get fairly paid for their work; they know what they're doing. I don't and don't mess with the big volts stuff.
I don't think you want to bury any non-standard wiring in the walls. First, I suspect there's some violation of electrical codes involved. Even if not, YOU may know how it's wired, but if anyone has to come in later to figure it out, someone could get severely injured or at least socked with a massive repair bill.
If you want independent control, then using 2 toggles as retsignalmtr suggested is the way to go. This would not be as unusual a circuit as driving the two outlets with a 3-way switch in an either-or configuration. I have the room lights in my layout room on dimmers. This gives me full control so I can decide how much light I want, either for night or day illumination. Hiring an electrician is the way to go, too.
I would go so far as to suggest you run 3 circuits with 3 switches and do theater style lighting. That would allow you to do dawn and dusk as well. I mean, if you're going to do the effort to run actual lighting circuits. Which is worth it by the way. Plugs that you plug in or pull out and leave dangling doesn't really give good ....feng shui to the layout room.
Detail and Clarification The outlets will be installed above the lighting valence. Power will be routed from the floor outlets through a switch up above the valance in power rated non-metallic raceways. The plugs will be out of reach, thus the reason for a switch. I will use 14-3 romex wire. I will be using common 15A 120V household electrical switches and outlets. The lights will be plug-in tube fluorescents. My old layout routed power above and around the lighting valance with a series of extension cords, and power strips. The lights were switched using remote wireless outlet plugs. It was really a mish-mash system with a few problems. My kids keep losing the remote Excessive wire to control Too many connections I've wired four houses and am comfortable with home wiring. I also have a friend at work who is an electrician who I'm sure could help out if need be. Here is a diagram of what I'm thinking of. A pair of toggles will also work, but I was thinking I could save space for other switches in the box (They only make 1 & 2 gang boxes for this raceway system) by comboing the daytime/nightime lighting on one switch, but if I'm going to need to use a toggle to give me an off position, maybe I'm not saving anything, but an extra pigtail. Unless there is an equivalent of a SPDT Center Off household switch.
I like the way you think. Please elaborate, what is theater style lighting? I currently have bright white fluorescents (day) and LED light strips for night. The LED's strips are actully capable of multiple colors. When I bought them I was hoping to gently fade from yellow (day) to blue (night). Unfortunately, they are programmed to go from purple to blue to green to yellow to orange to red in some strange order. So I keep them on blue. I agree with you about the appearance of plugs and wires running everywhere, which is one reason I'd like to get rid of the multiple extension cords & power strips. I thought about direct wiring to the valance, but I think that's just playing with fire. The only direct wire systems I'd like to use would include conduit (raceways) attaced to walls. I'm thinking a series of outlets placed above the valance will give me less wires, less connections and still keep the safety of plug-in lighting attached to the valance.
Theater lighting is technically Red/Green/Blue lights. In the most complex systems each would be dimmable, but for this purpose that might be overkill. My old Gradeschool's stage didn't dim lights, but had banks of lights ganged together so instead of 3 switches it would be 6. You should be able to get LEDs that have controlled light cycling. They cost more though. They do sell compact florescent in Red, Green and Blue so you could do it that way. They also sell Tubes in colors, but they're harder to find. Red green and blue together form white in this case. Another options would to use your white florescent tubes and get theater lighting gels in those various colors and just cover the white in those colors 3 tubes per area. I'm obviously making this harder not easier, but I'm a lighting snob, I think model railroads should be theater lighted at a minimum.
As long as you use standard household wiring supplies your idea will work. Below is a schematic on how I would do it. All of the junctions need to be enclosed in approved electrical boxes. After you get the first one wired then all you have to do is break the tab on the hot side (short tab) of the additional duplexes and run a three (3) conductor with ground romex (you now will need to run four wires) in a daisy chain fashion to the rest. Hope this helps. Gary
No problem with liking good lighting, I read your blog post On Lighting and couldn't agree that poor lighting is a killer. Lighting wise, my old layout could be divided into three sections. One section was completely lit with 6100K tube fluorescents, it looked great. One section was dimly lit with 3500K fluorescent tube. It was always a strain to look at and photograph. One section was lit by the 60W incadescent ceiling fixture and a large window, in the daytime it usually looked good, at night it was horrible. I'm not seeing how red, green and blue lights would work. Perhaps I should buy a few and experiment with your idea of theater lighting. Thanks
Heh, I need to blog more. I still stand by my statement, the easiest way to tell if a picture is of a model vs. prototype is horrible horrible lighting. Of course, proper lighting costs money both up front and in the electric bill. Of course, the electric bill can be reduced by spending more up front... As for RGB lighting. Think of your TV. it uses 3 colored dots, red, green and blue to make every single color you see on the screen. (well, it uses many many sets of 3 colored dots, but you get the point. Here's another thing about lighting science. Lighted colors work the opposite of reflected color. For example, if you take a red, green and blue crayon and color one over the other on a sheet of white paper, what do you get? Something close to black. If you put no color on it, it would be white yes? Now, suppose on the other hand you are in a room totally sealed with no lights turned on. What color is the room? Black obviously. Turn the red light on and it's read, turn the read and blue on and it's purple, turn red, green and blue on at the same time and it is white...or more likely a warm sunlight yellow since the lights you lit probably are fairly narrow in spectrum. Here's another thing to think about. Color temperature in a lightbulb really tells you about what the dominate color of the lightbulb appears to be. Higher the temperature, the closer it is to blue. Most cheap lighting is far far far more red/yellow than the sun which is why it makes models look unrealistic.
Another inexpensive way to deploy RGB lighting on a layout would be with Single color Christmas lights. LED Christmas lights are cooler, use less electricity and have significantly longer lifespan. Standard incandescent Christmas lights are dirt cheap, easy to repair and even easier to replace. Both come in Red, Green, Blue and white. LEDs come in Warm white and blue-white which is probably better for these purposes. Best time to buy is of course the last week of December into January. In either case, they scale very very easily and can be formed around any curve or put in oddball places with ease. Both types can be dimmed. One more aspect of lighting that is really beyond the scope of this thread, but hey, I've held forth on the topic far more than needed already is the use of directional lighting to indicate a time of day. Unless you live at the equator and you want your layout to be perpetually set at the noon hour, you need to cast shadows and ideally they'd all be going the same direction. From a stage lighting perspective, this is the same as the spotlight on the actor. The entire stage has general lighting as I've described AND the actors are in a spotlight.
You've still got me interested. So you'd do 4 strands total, Red, Blue, Green and White? I'm wondering if a 10W C9 Christmas light spaced every 1' would be bright enough. I think a mulit colored dimmable array would be awesome. Talk about going off on a tangent But that's why I like posting, people have totally diferrent ideas you've never even thought of.
Personally I would use minilights. C9s are going to generate a lot of waste heat (unless you do LED C9s) LEDs cost more but are probably your best buy although PartyLights is a little pricier than I was expecting http://www.partylights.com/LED/LED-PolkaDot-Sets And yes, I would use RGB+ White. White would only be on for full sun simulation. You might not even need it. I'd start with RGB and if you are dissatisfied with the light level at full sun, Add white.
For any household wiring these days, I would go with #12 wire. #14 is appropriate for 15A breakers only. It's OK if the rest of the circuit is #14 and the breakers are 15A, but make sure what you've got in the wall before you connect #14 up to it.
Gary, although you have simplified the wiring, this arragement using the 3-way sw will only give power to either or (there's no center off). Now an additional single pole sw is needed to "kill" the power to the common terminal of the 3-way. Using a duplex box and 2 single pole sw would work better, then the switched power can be run to the diffent fixtures w/ the 14/3. Why all the sw recepticles? run all the sw leads to J-boxes and then hardwire the individual lighting from there. Recepticle placement would be rather critical to ensure that the plug pigtails to the different lights will fit. By hardwiring you can run 14/2 neatly to the fixture. Much easier and a cleaner installation. Just make sure that that 15A lighting circuit can handle all the lighting power requirements. Don't know just how many lights you need, If possible run a dedicated 15A circuit for the lighting.
Why not hard wire to junction boxes? It'd be much prettier and straight forward I agree. But for safety reasons, I don't have any hard wire connections on the lighting valance. I also don't want to run conduit to each light on the valance.
I'd Normally use #12 wire, but the current circuit is 15A and uses #14 wire. I don't want to confuse anyone by using a different gauge wire. This wiring will be surface mounted to the wall, inside a power rated raceway, tapped from an existing 15A circuit.
