| Ideas for Solar Lighting
 This article explains some very basic things about solar lighting that you probably already know, as well as some things I've tried recently. It's not really a reference document; rather it's meant to be a source of ideas and encouragement to try similar projects yourself.
I have never had an "open house" at night until this year. So the fact that I had very little lighting on my railroad never bothered me. But this past July, we had a birthday party in the back yard, and the trains were running after dark, and all you could see on the railroad were the locomotive headlights and the lighting in the passenger coaches, circling like electric eels in the darkness. Well, there was a "solar" lighthouse I had got from Meijer's when they closed out their lawn "art."
 I've had reasonable luck with solar lamps at other places in the yard, but I've avoided solar lamps on my railroad because I thought they would look goofy. The "black plastic flying saucer" motif has never appealed to me, and even the least objectionable lights, shape-wise would take up too visual "space" on my garden railroad compared to the amount of light they shed. Also, many solar lamps don't illuminate, really; they glow. So you can see where the lamps are, but you can't really see much around them, which somewhat defeats a major purpose of lighting, in my opinion.
 Still, I thought it was time to experiment. Maybe being able to see where my railroad IS would be a start. So I started keeping an eye out for something small I could use in a pinch. This article tells what I found and what I still plan to try.
By the way, I also bought a low-voltage starter set, but I figured I'd want to try solar anyway for the towns and buildings that are in out-of-the way places, so I started with solar. When I've made enough mistakes with the low-voltage lighing project, I'll report back about that, too.
General Comments About Solar Garden Lamps
Solar garden lamps promise A: convenience, and B: energy savings, compared to other technologies, such as 12-volt lighting. I think they deliver on convenience, as long as you buy the right product for the job you want it to do. On the other hand, I'm not sure that they really "save energy" in the long run - chances are it takes more energy to make one of these devices than they'll ever give back. (Anybody who knows otherwise, feel free to correct me, as long as you have actual facts.) In this article we'll focus on the convenience aspect.
Note: As more and more companies get into the market and as more uses for small solar lighting products are developed, we can expect to see incremental product improvements every year, and significant jumps every few years. So it's quite likely that everything in this article will be obsolete in a year, but that's okay, if it gives you something to think about or starts you experimenting.
How Solar Garden Lamps Work - Most solar garden lights have a small solar panel that converts sunlight into a trickle of energy. That energy goes into a circuit that charges a Ni-Cad battery. They also have a light sensor (sometimes built into the solar panel) that tells the circuit when it's dark out, so the circuit knows to stop charging and start sending electricity to the LED.
An LED - "Light-Emitting-Diode" - is a small mostly plastic electronic device that glows when it receives low voltage DC. It actually gives way more light per volt than a traditional filament bulb, so it's well suited for solar garden lights.
 Because the LED is so small, its bright pinpoint casts razor-sharp shadows and can keep your eyes from adjusting to the darkness if you look right at it. So most solar lamps use a diffuser of some sort to "spread out" the light a little. The black plastic flying saucers just use a milky outer shell that, unfortunately, causes the lamp to glow rather than to shine on other objects. Many of those that use clear "panes" (like the carriage light shown above) use a plastic tube with lots of crystal shapes molded into it to distribute the light over a larger area. In most cases, this leaves the carriage lights looking like they're powered by radioactive carrots, which is not necessarily a natural look, either. But such lights do allow more of the light to escape than the black plastic flying saucers do, so the best of them light their surroundings a little.
Most Solar Garden Lamps Use Weak Rechargeables - Now, the solar panels are more efficient than they were just a few years ago, which is a good thing. On the other hand, NiCad batteries are a relatively weak technology compared to the NiMH batteries being used in most rechargeable devices today, so there IS a practical limit to just how much power a solar garden lamp can store using a NiCad battery or two.
Most Solar Garden Lamps Now Use A Brighter, but Less Natural-Looking Light Source - For years, solar garden lamps used LEDs that gave off a warm yellow light they usually called "amber." The light from amber LEDs is pretty dim, but it does look relatively "natural," as though it came from a gaslight or candle. Today, most solar garden lamps today use "bright white" LEDs that give off a light that's almost as blue as the old mercury vapor streetlights. Many of the new lamps give more light than their predecessors, but anything they illuminate looks relatively "cold and lifeless." 
What About Using Solar Lamp Parts to Light Buildings? -
I've thought about trying to use the parts from a solar garden lamp to light building interiors, etc. I think it's possible, if you could put the solar cell someplace inconspicuous, and run wires to the circuit. But on many solar garden lights I checked out, the solar cell is glued to the plastic framework and its leads are soldered right to the circuit board, so you'd run the risk of damaging it if you tried to get the solar cell detached from the rest of the thing. Yes, if I had much more time on my hands, and as much proclivity to solder and unsolder things as I did when I was twenty, I could do it, but I already have enough "serious" projects on hand. I did find one set, a sort of solar metal "lumiere" that had a solar cell that just screwed on and had real wires going between the solar cell and and the circuit, so I can lengthen the wires and give that a try.
 This may seem to beg the question, why not just buy the parts separately and do it all yourself? The answer is that, due to Chinese manufacture of the lamps, it's cheaper to buy a whole lamp and throw away everything but the electronics than it is to buy only the parts you need. Especially if you can get the lamps at an end-of-season clearance.
How Can You Tell if a Solar Lamp is Good or Not? - Another issue is that you can't tell how much light a solar lamp will give or how long it will stay lit just by looking at it in the store. My limited experience shows that lamps that have more than one LED are brighter, and they don't necessarily go out any sooner. Also, lamps that have 2 batteries tend to brighter and last longer than lamps that only have one battery. Generally, though, you won't get into a lamp that has multiple LEDs and multiple batteries unless it also has an expensive "carriage light" framework or the like that you'll have to discard. In a couple of years, even the cheap ones may be as bright as the expensive ones, so if all you can afford to "cannibalize" right now are the cheap ones, experiment with those. In fact, every solar garden lamp I own, I got at the end-of-season closeouts, which is one reason I'm putting this article up in late summer.
How Can You Tell if Solar Lamps Will Work For You? Most of them need a few hours of direct sunlight every day to reach their full potential of brightness and longevity. If your garden railroad is in heavy shade, or even mostly shaded, you may not be a good candidate for anything solar. Sorry. :-(
 Street Lamps on the New Boston and Donnels Creek
Again, most solar garden lamps that are shaped anything like street lights are too big to use regardless. After all the designers aren't thinking about what garden railroaders need. And the solar cell forces the things to be at least a certain dimension. That said, in 2007, Big Lots sold a set of "cheapies" that were smaller than average - the solar cell took up most of the top. One advantage to them was the fact that instead of being eight times too large for my railroad , they are only about four times too large. No, they won't fool anyone into thinking they were scale, but they won't visually take over the space, either. These lamps used a wire mesh instead of the more typical glass or plastic panes, but the effect is not objectionable.
At first Big Lots had these lights listed for $20 for a set of four. At the end of the season, they marked them down to $9 a set. No-brainer time. I got two sets and set out a few to see if they would a: Illuminate as well as glow, and b: be small enough not to take over my railroad visually. They did illuminate a little. And in a way I could see the benefit of the brightly colored screens - enough light was reflected from the inside of each screen to give the glow a slight green, yellow, pink, or aquamarine cast - something that might be of interest to a person who wanted colored lights in the back yard.
Actually, the lights with the yellow screens looked more "organic" than the rest - the yellow screens seemed to balance out the bluish-white a little. I was tempted to leave the screens on the yellow lights yellow, but decided that having all the lamps the same color was more important.  Big lots will probably never have this particular set again, but this is to give you an idea of what is possible.
Getting Rid of the Party Colors - I also pulled one lamp completely apart and decided to try to work with the basic structure of the thing instead of trying to come up with something clever. However, the colors had to go. So I took them apart and masked off the LEDs. About half of them had a piece of protective vinyl over the solar panel. On the ones that didn't, I masked off the panel as well, holding my breath that the tape wouldn't damage the solar panel in any way (it didn't). By the way, I didn't take photos the first time I did this so these photos are actually from the seond batch.
 Then I took the lamps out to my favorite "painting booth" (a collection of old milk cartons in the rear part of the back yard) and sprayed them from every angle twice. Again, these photos are actually from the second batch.
The Outcome of the Street Lamp Attempt
Finally, I reassembled the lamps, then got out the "bases." These were black, fluted tubes. One end could be pressed into the base of the lamp unit, and the other end fit over the top of a stake that was similar to the stakes on low-voltage lighting. After I assembled the first one and tried to stick the stake part into the ground, I remembered that it hadn't rained in months. So I took the stake part out and hammered it into the ground, trying to keep it straight. Then I put the rest of the fixture on top of the stake. As you can see in the title photo, I tried to set these so they would illuminate the structures in my towns without obscuring the view from the most likely viewing positions. The results were not universally successful - I discovered that the lamp had to be pretty close to illuminate anything. And also, the "best" placement for the lamp, lighting-wise, was often the worst placement, aesthetically. Still, the results were generally positive. There was no question that I could use another eight or so if I wanted to do it "right." So I wound up "kicking myself" for not buying all they had. Later I did get three more sets from another Big Lots store, so now I probably have more than enough.
One lamp from the first batch seemed to work intermittently. After disassembling it again, I discovered that the battery was loose, so I wedged it in a little tighter. Still, they do all come on at slightly different times (based on when the "deep shade" hits each individual lamp), and they all go off at way different times (based on which ones got the most direct sunlight during the day). At the best, they're good for three or four hours after dark, compared to some of the fancier two-battery lights I have that will go up to ten hours. But since I usually run my trains in the summer (when it doesn't get dark until 8:30 or 9:00PM), that pretty well covers the hours I need them anyway.
The results include:
- You can see the lamps glowing from across the yard, but it's a little hard to see exactly what they are illuminating until your eyes have adjusted to the darkness.
- The illumination they do provide is faint and bluish-white, much like pale moonlight, or, frankly, like the mercury vapor street-lamps in some cities today. If you want your railroad at night to look "warm and welcoming" rather than "cold," consider adding some component, such as warm interior lighting, to balance out the effect. In the case of these particular lamps, I can't help but remember how the yellow screen made the light seem a little more natural from the inside. I may investigate the possibility of painting just the inside of the screens yellow on the ones that are still apart, and see if that helps the overall look.
- On the "bright side" (pardon the pun), I can move these around wherever I want them, and I don't have to worry about timers or burying low-voltage wires. There is something nice about coming home after dark and seeing my little communities lit up. Yes, I could accomplish the same thing with low-voltage lighting, and the effect would probably be better, but the process could not be easier.
 In the illustration of the night scene I've included, you can get a general idea. There are two "storefronts, surrounded by greenery. In front of them is one of those little Ertle trucks parked on the street, and in front of that is a gazebo.
After I started working with this photo, I noticed that the building on the right has a little bit of interior lighting. Then I remembered that I stuck one of those units from the lumieres onto the back of the building (which is open), so that the solar cell was sticking out and the diffuser was sticking in. Still, the diffuser is in the top of the building, so it's not shedding much light near the windows. To do this "right," I need to position the LED and diffuser better, and also glaze the window, and maybe provide curtains or something else to soften the blueish-white light. Still it establishes that it "can be done" (if you don't mind spending an average of $4 per building to do it, as the lumieres cost on clearance).
 Update, April, 2008
I left these lamps out over the winter. One of them "gave up the ghost," but the others are still working. I DID notict that they only give an average of 3-4 hours a night, less than three if the day was gloomy. This isn't a problem in the summer, when they don't even kick in until 9:00PM or later. But in the winter, when they kick in at 5:30 and give out by 8:30 or so, they are somewhat less expressive.
On the next batch of these, I tried to make the lamps' light look slightly more organic by spraying the inside of the screens yellow before I put them back together.  In the photo to the lower right, the lamps on each side of the station have been treated with the yellow treatment; the one in front has not. You can see that the difference is marginal, but it still helps a bit.
More to Come
Hopefully, I will have more ideas and information about solar lighting soon. But I wanted to get the basic article started just to encourage folks to try something along this line themselves. You would be surprised HOW many of these articles have given rise to a whole new "standard" way of doing things over the years. In the meantime, I have to confess that being able to see my railroad, even a little bit when I pull into the driveway after dark is kind of fun. It's a little like the little communities have decided to "leave the light on for me."
Your Input Needed
Obviously, if you've done something that outshines our feeble attempts, please let us know and we'll publish any ideas and photos we get from folks.
Reader Feedback
Bruce Jahn, a west coast friend says:
I applaud your efforts with solar lighting and wish to add a bit of my experience.
Although I've only put solar lighting into two of my RR buildings, I've tried
numerous brands of solar lighting around my yard. To this end, I've yet to find any
manufacturer's product that lasts more than a few months before giving up. Often the
supplied battery goes bad and when replaced, the unit never works as original. More often
than not, the electronics merely quits, either from moisture of my sprinklers or just
poor engineering design.
The only success I've had was using a formal 5 watt solar panel to daily charge a
deep cycle battery which is wired to the lights. Not quite the simplicity one would like
in this type of effort.
Hence, I'm going to wait to hear a couple testimonials from someone who actually
claims they've used a "store bought" system for more than a few months.
[We'll keep you posted - ed]
John Blessing, of Tucson, Arizona, writes:
Hi Paul,
Another grand issue, thank you.
I have a comment on the Out Door Lighting thread. We have purchased for Anozira RR some LED, bullet shaped, spot lights, which we have tested mounted on a pole to illuminate segments of the pike. As being spot lights, they shine down on the track areas, flooding light to where one needs to see. Experimentation with height above the ground, the angle to set each bullet-lamp, and how many lamps per pole to effect the coverage required is simply an exercise of diligence. We have found that the floods illuminate the track and way such that train operations are easily seen and the walk areas are lighted also, and unobtrusively well that folks can move about in safety with out stumbling, tripping, and going where they should not.
We have invested in two types of flood lamps: a Malibu, model LZ413, set of 3 each, 3 LED bulbs per lamp, energized by one solar cell array; AND another Malibu model having 1 each light comprised of 6 LED lamps energized by one solar cell array.
Each lamp in 3 LED bulb/light set is not as bright as the 6 bulb lamp, which makes the light flooded area more subdued/softer, but also each 3 LED lamp will not illuminate as much area. However, since there are 3 lamps in the set, one can mount them to illuminate a much wider expanse of area. That is kind of nice too because each lamp can be set to either blend with its neighbors, or set to illuminate spots with darker areas in between lighted spots. Interesting to watch a train pass from one lighted spot to the next, sort of like going through a connecting tunnel.
The light housing are flat black. We are to mount the lamp(s) on steel poles that are the pipes used in home situation, chain link fencing. So all the hardware is easy to acquire from Lowes or Home Depot to make the poles look stylish such as the fennel on end, clamps upon which to affix each lamp array. All are galvanized. All available in different diameters and lengths.
I have not installed any yet as our Tucson weather has been too hot for me to be messing with the RR much.
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This article explains some very basic things about solar lighting that you probably already know, as well as some things I've tried recently. It's not really a reference document; rather it's meant to be a source of ideas and encouragement to try similar projects yourself.
