Electrical and Lighting Articles

This page is one place we're trying to collect what we know about electricity and garden railroading. There is no one best practice for any wiring, lighting, or control topic, so we are listing the things we come across or try out that might be helpful to the next person. If you have any content you'd like to see in this place, please let us know, and we'll post it here or link to it if possible - and of course you get full credit for your ideas and photos.

• Large Scale Power and Control - Describes the advantages and disadvantages of all the most popular ways to power and control your trains, including conventional track power and control and most kinds of remote control. If you're thinking about battery-powered remote control, you should probably read this article before you buy your track.

• Electrical Safety and Garden Railroading - Rules of thumb for safe use of electricity in any garden, especially a garden railroad. August, 2002

• 12 Volt Street Lamps from Specialty Light Strands A ten-light 110-120v strand with special "lamp-like" fixtures can easily be divided into ten 11-12-volt fixtures suitable for use in street lamps. The complicated part is giving them posts to hang from. In this article I research two ideas but I know there are dozens of other possibilities. This approach gives you working street lamps for a fraction of what they cost to buy. New August, 2009

• Lighting Buildings with Low Voltage Garden Lighting - Describes low-voltage garden lighting installations and some ideas for using them on your garden railroad. Updated, November, 2008

• Ideas for Solar Lighting - Now's a good time to experiment with bringing light to the darkened corners of your railroad. Updated October, 2008

• Free Project Wire from Bad Light Strands - When I recently wired my buildings for a garden railroad open house, I found a source of useful project wire in a pile of stuff I was planning to throw away anyway. January, 2009

• Low-Voltage LED Garden Lighting - Using LED fixtures that have been "wired" to work in 12-volt systems - way more light, way less power, a few drawbacks. Updated, December, 2009

Power and Control Articles from Other Folks

• George Schreyer's power and control articles - George likes to try out new things, then tell us what didn't work out as well as what did. He has tried just about every way to power and control locomotives, so his Large Scale Technical Tips page is chock full of useful information. Here are a few articles that will help get you started:

  • Large Scale Trains Power Source Tips From George Schreyer's Large Scale Technical Tips page. This article is George's take on the same issues I discussed in my Large Scale Power and Control article - in short, how will you power and control your trains?

  • Prime Power Tips - George Schreyer "breaks down" track power issues into their basic components - transformers, rectifiers, rheostats, fuses, and so on. It also has some tips on wiring complex layouts.

  • The AristoCraft Train Engineer (TE) From George Schreyer's Large Scale Technical Tips page. George has "road-tested" every version of AristoCraft's remote control system and has several suggestions for getting the optimum performance from the system.

  • Battery-Powered Radio Control Tips - George provides details on the relative advantages of battery-powered remote control versus track-powered remote control (like DCC and some AristoCraft TE).

  • Digital Command Control (DCC) Tips - George slices and dices DCC, especially as it applies to Large Scale trains.

• We have a few more articles to link to as soon as we get the authors' permission, so check back once in a while. :-)

As always, please contact us with questions, corrections, additions, suggestions, or for any other reason at all.

Best of luck, all,

Paul D. Race