Lighting and colour in a cameo…

Story telling. If you accept that my model railways are an artful means to share a story, offering a window in to my experience and interpretation of the world then you will understand why I’ve been experimenting with colour…

A few years ago I discovered some LED strip and it just works. It’s wonderful stuff, a warm natural white that suits my usual ‘rose tinted’ mindset. Illuminating East Works onwards the temperature does add a slight yellow tint but I like it. It has since lent the same feeling to all my commission builds and most importantly at home, Beaverbrook, Paxton Road and Lochdubh. 

More recently though, when I’ve wanted to tell a different story it has felt to nostalgic. I wanted a cooler light, perhaps bluer? Certainly less yellow. I sourced some ‘cool white’ LED strip but it was not of the same quality and brightness as 4000k ‘natural white’. Still, I thought, let’s have an experiment! Connected up to the variable output of my Gaugemaster controller (it’s only 1m long so within the amp output of the controller) I strung it inside Wrecsam Canolog.

On its own the main problem was it just isn’t bright enough, I’m not sure if this is because it’s less powerful (though it’s rating is the same) or if because the cooler light isn’t quite as bright, but as you can see above, it’s un-natural. However, add the natural white in, and turn down the intensity (voltage) in the cool and you get a more natural, cooler look (below), perhaps more neutral?

When the story is less about warm childhood memories and more cold reality you can appreciate why I’m keen to experiment. Whilst I know there are other lighting solutions out there these strips work very well in small cameo boxes so I’d like to persevere for now, which leads me to my final thought. On a new project I didn’t have the space to consider running a cool and a natural strip. I wondered if there was a possibility of a ‘short cut’? I found a blue sharpie and ran the tip over several of the LEDs. The result was good. A visible cooling of the light temperature. I continued. It went to blue. Some IPA on a paint brush wiped over some of the LEDs reduced the blue tint a touch and I iteratively found the right balance. 

Whilst this layout isn’t ready to hit the blog yet I hope that when it does the cooler temperature will suit the scene, which will depict a wintry windswept location. Colour could also be used to tell a story in a different way, and in Wrecsam it might help with the grim reality of modern life. For now though this is a technical experiement, that I’m sure others have tried, whilst my aim isn’t a ‘natural light’ for its own sake, rather to tell a story, the result is the same. Until next time, more soon…

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