Lighting in dome car

Domes have/had lights. The only time I ever saw lights on in a Dome was when the Conductor was collecting tickets. Otherwise dark so passengers could see out.

The Dome on the B&O Capitol had exterior searchlights that lit up the countryside. I wondered then and now what people living along the ROW thought about those blinding lights.

ON EDIT: Every Dome I was ever in also had floor night-lights so passengers could walk without tripping but they were very low wattage and I doubt would have been visible from outside.

I have replaced incandescent lights with LEDs in some of my MTH passenger cars.  For partial length dome cars, I didn’t install LEDs in the dome as I think there is enough ambient light.  For full length dome cars, I used the existing light bar to hold the LED strip.  Not sure how you would do it on your Lionel cars without more details.

Rockershovel posted:

One consist includes a dome car. How would that be lit? Are there lights in the dome? 

LIONEL offered two premium, 15" offset domes in the UP anniversary set years ago, the Plainfield (pictured) and Westfield.  The set number was 6-31712.  Those cars used light strips running the length of the coach consisting of four separate parts joined by shared wiring.

There were short and long parts for the car ends fore and aft of the dome attached to the roof of the extrusion.  At the dome were two parts equal in length to the dome which straddled the center line of the dome's base which had a void to allow light to enter the dome from below.  There was no overhead lighting for the dome.  The parts are available to view on Lionel's parts website.

I'm providing this description simply to explain how Lionel chose to light a premium product at the time.  I'm modifying three of these for two paint projects and will install LED strips rather than retain the OEM lighting as described. I haven't decided yet how the domes will be lit.

Good luck with your project.

That’s all about as I thought. No overhead lighting in the dome (which is a full length one, by the way) but low-level lighting coming from floor level. 

I’ll need to give though to passenger figures in the dome...

I've done a bunch of different dome cars, here's some I kept pictures of a few.  While it may not be prototypical to have lights in the dome, I think it looks much better if I can see the passengers I put in there.

This is an older Williams dome, I actually build a whole interior for the dome as it was a car with silhouettes.  I made seats from some wood molding I had and used the Chinese figures to populate the dome.  The lighting was connected to the main car lighting, the floor was heavy black cardboard hot glued in place.

Here's the Railking Reading Crusader dome car.  I put the lighting along the seats in this one as there was no place overhead to put it.

And here's probably the "deluxe" dome upgrade, this one I used for my lighting kit York sample.  The link takes you to the whole upgrade thread, the shot below is how I put the strip in the dome.

LED Lighting Upgrade for MTH Full Dome Car

I’ve had a chance to look into this now. The car in question is a full-length dome, extruded aluminium body, dating from the 1990s. 

The lighting consists of two bulbs in the lower body, which illuminate the silhouettes in the windows and two “light bars” which extend into the table lights in the dome. 

I’m looking at an option which fits an LED strip in each car, plus a capacitor to eliminate the flickering and run the lights for a short while when stopped - I believe Lionel now fit something similar? Sounds a good option, anyway - there is an end-dome car in the set as well so it would look very atmospheric, I think. 

In terms of realism, little to no lighting in the dome is most accurate. Think about driving in your car at night. With the interior lights on you can't see outside very well. Most domes had dim floor lighting that can't really be seen from outside the car, similar to the aisle lighting on theaters or planes. 

@Rockershovel posted:

I’ve had a chance to look into this now. The car in question is a full-length dome, extruded aluminium body, dating from the 1990s. 

The lighting consists of two bulbs in the lower body, which illuminate the silhouettes in the windows and two “light bars” which extend into the table lights in the dome. 

I’m looking at an option which fits an LED strip in each car, plus a capacitor to eliminate the flickering and run the lights for a short while when stopped - I believe Lionel now fit something similar? Sounds a good option, anyway - there is an end-dome car in the set as well so it would look very atmospheric, I think. 

So, are you speaking of one car (i.e. "the car in question"), or more than one as in "each car."

FWIW, it's helpful to supply the Manufacturer, model no., and photos if you know how to do it or are willing to learn.

@Will Ebbert posted:

In terms of realism, little to no lighting in the dome is most accurate. Think about driving in your car at night. With the interior lights on you can't see outside very well. Most domes had dim floor lighting that can't really be seen from outside the car, similar to the aisle lighting on theaters or planes. 

I concur.  I rode Via's Canadian from Jasper to Toronto a few years ago and spent much of the day and night in sitting in the dome car.  The dome cars had dim floor lights at night so you could see where to step.  NH Joe

@Will Ebbert posted:

In terms of realism, little to no lighting in the dome is most accurate. Think about driving in your car at night. With the interior lights on you can't see outside very well. Most domes had dim floor lighting that can't really be seen from outside the car, similar to the aisle lighting on theaters or planes. 

True enough, but it just doesn't look right to me, and I suspect a lot of other folks, to have no lights in the dome.  Not everything is about be ing "most accurate", sometimes it's about what is pleasing to the eye.

So I went back into my archives...  I have an offset dome like Carl’s UP dome.  It’s the Super Chief set 6-15312.  The second(they uploaded in reverse order) video shows the dome pretty close up, original lighting from below.  Can’t see the patrons very well, which may be to your taste.  I performed a lighting upgrade on the car and used 3 led for the dome roof.  As you can see, it does, in fact, brighten up the space.  Maybe too much just sitting in a static presentation.  But for my taste when running on the layout even slowly, as in the first video, the lighting doesn’t shine so brightly so as to ruin the effect.  IMHO  To each his own.

This has moved along now, so I thought I’d reply.

Firstly, the car is a Lionel 6-52085 “City of Dallas”

I have five cars in all, including a Skytop observation car, but only one dome car.

The tables in the dome have a lucite strip which is obviously intended to light the table lamps, which I thought would be a rather pleasing effect. The other cars look good, but this one seems to need a bit more light; if I could get the table lamps visible, plus some ambient leakage from below to suggest low-level strip lighting at floor level, that would be great.

I will look into this some more.

Some years ago when I had a permanent layout I started using fiber optics to create some lighting options in various rooms.   Worked good coming through the floor for table lamps in the various rooms. Wall sconce was a bit more difficult but the concept would be the same.   The mostly just produced a nice glow rather than bright light.   I haven't tried it on observation cars but now I might consider it.

The lucite strip is a very interesting detail; never seen that before in an O scale car but have seen something similar in HO (Marklin and other dining cars). These days you could use side-reflecting fiber optic strands or individual LEDS for table lamps, although the latter option (which I have done) is not very cheap in terms of time or components.

I'd speculate that if it was intended that in this car the table lamps would show as lighted, other lighting would be minimal (or not used) so as not to drown them out. You may want to consider that in making your lighting modifications. Also, looks like the car was produced before the days of things like GRJ's passenger car LED lighting kits, which allow you to adjust the brightness of the lighting. (Intentional but well deserved plug - I have used several of these kits, sometimes for lighting projects GRJ could never have designed them for.)

In any case, domes and dining cars don't as good as they might without some form of direct lighting, which can be overhead or (in domes) at floor level. I prefer the latter, but put both in the last dome I did, a Lionel UP excursion car. Overhead and floor lighting was overkill, but the dome was intended to look like an aquarium or Christmas Tree and does:

It might not be strictly realistic, but the “aquarium” effect is definitely very pleasing, isn’t it?

I took the body off the dome car and discovered that the bulb sockets were still in place, so I refitted the bulbs. Having the much brighter bulbs closer to the lucite bar has done the trick, lighting the table lamps. The LED strip, extra wiring and capacitor mean the flickering is eliminated, and the whole consist draws much less power overall because there are no other bulbs, just LED strips.