Thank you so much for all of the replies. It's a little overwhelming, frankly, since I am not good at the electrical part. But it's also forced me to whittle down my questions to be more specific.
First, to answer one of the questions about what type of buildings they are: A combination of stacked MTH, Girder & Panel (1/87, but just enlarge the entrances and build them taller), American Skyline, Arkitex (1/42), Tiny (1/64 but just build them taller), and Magnuson Models. I'd be lying if I said living in midtown Manhattan for 20 years was the only reason for a skyscraper layout; I also saw Alan Arnold's unbelievable layout more than a decade ago and I've been stockpiling building kits ever since.
The Elevated subway is my concoction of 100-year-old Erector Set girders, square dowels from Lowe's, small screws from a local screw specialist, literally), foil tape, silver spraypaint, and wood stain to mimic rust.
Highway under the Elevated system is mostly Atlas O track in 054 and 045, with 1/32 Scalextric R4 slot car track running 1960s 1/43 Motorific cars. The wider 1/32 slot car track looks way more realistic for the O-size cars. I got very lucky that the radius of the R4 Scalextric slot car track (their widest) matched the radius of the Atlas 045/054 rails above.
My remaining questions:
1) What voltage of LED bulbs do you recommend to light the buildings, if I'm gonna power them with my Lionel ZW transformers? Years ago, in my older layout, someone helped me hook them up to the ZW and its levers served as good "dimmers", with nothing ever burning out. I can't remember the bulb voltage, and I doubt he would either.
2) Considering that I have about 70 buildings, can I just hook up the lights down through the building to one or more terminal boards underneath, and then just wire the terminal boards to the back of the transformer? Is it that simple? I've heard there are pre-wired LED bulbs that are all ready to use with the Lionel ZW (as in, they've been converted to the right type of AC/DC power?)
That's it! Thank you again if you have answers to the above questions, and in return for your advice, here's some additional
pics of the various stages so far.
