One of the things I wanted to replace as I rebuilt Fen End Pit was the original lighting rig. It was constructed out of 6mm MDF, used florescent tubes and had some rather questionable main power. The layout is a slightly different shape than before so reusing the rig would have involved a lot of reconstruction work. I believe a lighting rig can make or break an exhibition layout and sometimes layouts which look good in photographs on the web or in magazines can really be let down by their lighting at shows.

I made a mock up section of box girder out of 3mm ply a few years back and this was ridiculously rigid for its weight. Trying to see if I could use the same technique for the lighting rig seemed to be worth a try. Last Sunday was spend laser cutting 3x2 sheets of 3mm ply into a complex array of pieces in Makespace in Cambridge.

The top piece is the length with the holes cut in it which will give access to any wiring and slightly reduces the weight some more. I cut 4 diagonal braces and two pieces for the ends. The resulting units are 1170mm long and the top and front of the girder is 100mm. The back is 35mm giving a diagonal section to put the lights on of 120mm.

The plan is that each unit fits into the next one with a sort of tongue and socket joint, I cut these from 6mm ply, each joint being a lamination of 3 layers. The middle layer has a missing section which allows a pin to slide down to lock the two sections into place.

Once together there is very little movement between the sections.

For the lighting I've purchased two different sorts of LED lighting strip. For the main light I have some 'Daylight white LED strip' but because this a quite a 'cold' white I wanted to be able to adjust the colour balance. Certain sports halls used for model railway exhibitions have the most weird coloured lighting! Between the 3 rows of white LEDs I've put another two strips of colour changing LEDs. These come with their own dinky remote control so you can set them to what ever colour you want, it looks like adding a bit of yellow gives quite a nice light.

I temporarily rigged up one unit to see how it looks and I'm quite pleased with the light distribution and colour. It is a bit had to judge from this picture but I turned off the lights in the room so the only light on the layout was from the rig.

There is still a lot more to do, making the supports for the rig being the most obvious! We now have our first booking in the rebuilt state for the Ely show in May next year. Its good to have a date to be aiming for (I think!)

David