# LED Track Lighting



## Odyknuck (Dec 31, 2015)

My layout room is nearing completion and now doing overhead lighting. Currently I have installed 6 - 2 X 2 LED drop in fixtures for general room lighting and LED track lighting for the bench work. To stay on track (punn intended) I realize there are more ways to do lighting however i have already bought the track lighting and will no be entertaining other options. 
My questions are:
1) I currently have them mounted 36" away from wall. Should they be mounted over bench work or in the aisleway pointing towards the layout. If so how far away. My ceiling is 7' 6" high and bench work will be from 48" to 56" high and 24" to 36" wide.

2) Should I use floods and/or spots. 

3) any other ideals for using track lighting.
Thanks much in advance.
Steve


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

I have a 3 unit track light mounted over
the layout in the center of the layout room.

It is adequate for general lighting using
incandescent flood bulbs. The dimmer affords
nice dusk or evening ambiance. 

You will want a work Light for your work bench.
The stuff we have to fiddle with requires 
good lighting.

Don


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## Deane Johnson (Sep 19, 2016)

I would use LED whenever it's possible to get the color and spread you want. My personal favorite is the Philips Warm Glow Dimmable Flood. It's a virtual carbon copy of the standard 65 watt incandescent flood. I have 4 fixtures in my kitchen ceiling and for testing purposes I installed one of these and left the other 3 incandescents in place. I couldn't tell which one was the LED, it was identical to my incandescents. The only difference was when they were slowly dimmed, the LED dropped off suddenly at about 5% brightness, typical of most all LEDs. When dimmed, they matched the color shift of the incandescents.

Above all, once you decide on something, I recommend buying only 1 to try before you go all the way. LED performance varies all over the place.

For what it's worth, I plan to put all track lighting over my layout when I get it built as I like the effect of being able to vary the brightness to emphasize certain areas.


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## Lehigh74 (Sep 25, 2015)

My layout is in the attic with sloping ceiling so there wasn’t much choice on placement of the lighting. I have a 12’ track on one side and 2 four foot tracks on the other placed near the edge of the platform on each side of the aisle. Lamps are arranged to avoid head knockers. Currently I have a mix of LED, CFL and incandescent bulbs (all floods, no spots). As the incandescent and CFL bulbs burn out, they are replaced with LEDs. Seems to work OK.


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## Odyknuck (Dec 31, 2015)

I have a 4' 2 tube florescent over the bench plus a florescent 3X magnifier.









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## Odyknuck (Dec 31, 2015)

DonR said:


> I have a 3 unit track light mounted over
> the layout in the center of the layout room.
> 
> It is adequate for general lighting using
> ...


Unfortunatly the bulbs I have are non dimmable.Ii bought 150' of track and 175 fixtures from a guy that demos mall stores for around 200 bucks. I have both the screw in style and the smaller 12VDC plug in style.


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## mopac (Feb 24, 2011)

I really like LED bulbs. Much brighter and whiter light. Big difference from other bulbs.
We had our kitchen completely redone. New light fixtures. New cabinets and new
granite counter tops. I had not bought all the led bulbs yet when the new granite
was installed. I had led bulbs in all the light fixtures except the ones over the island.
They were CFL bulbs. I was very upset with the granite people. The granite did not
match on the island with the rest of the granite. I was very upset. There was that much difference. I realized the bulbs were different and bought some LEDs for over the island.
Problem fixed. Granite matched perfect. I almost made an *** of myself complaining to
the granite people. 
We all know the sun will fade things. I was into baseball cards for awhile. If you left 
your cards near a window, the cards would really fade in just a couple days. Florescent
lights will do the same. Card dealers found that out with those glass cases in their stores.
I don't think LED light fades things, not sure. Your layout grass will fade if near a window or florescent light.


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## mopac (Feb 24, 2011)

I don't think any LED are that great for dimming. They use so little power its
hard to dim.


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## Magic (Jan 28, 2014)

I've got LEDs in my train room and they only dim about 50%.
I was hoping for more than that.

Once I get my scenery done :smilie_auslachen: I'll switch back to incandescent bulbs
so I can get lighting for sunrise and sunset.

Magic


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

The funny thing is, LEDs by themselves are excellent at dimming. Take any LED with a power source and variable resistor, and you can very finely adjust anywhere from full brightness down to something you have to be in a dark room to see. The real problem is the controllers they throw on these LED lightbulbs. You say you bought a non-dimmable LED bulb? That just means the seller was too cheap to put a decent circuit behind the LEDs.

On the other hand, the dimming properties of the bulb are greatly influenced by the dimmer switch you are using. If you have an old style turn knob (which is nothing more than a variable resistor) it should work great with LEDs. The problem is that newer dimmers are electronic circuits meant to work with difficult bulbs such as fluorescents, and instead of changing the voltage they put out something like an adjustable square-wave where a shorter peak makes the light dimmer but the actual voltage is still at 120V. Since an LED turns on and off instantly at full brightness, the output may not appear to your eyes to change much at all, but a high-speed film would show you the LED is blinking like crazy.

Something just occurred to me, if anyone wants to try an experiment. Do you remember when folks were selling those light bulb life extenders, which were just a simple button-shaped capacitor? If you were to put one of those behind an LED bulb, the capacitor would smooth out the square wave from an electronic dimmer switch, and probably allow the LED bulb to properly dim. I saw those capacitors still being sold at Ace Hardware a few years back so you can probably still get them somewhere. Hmm I think I actually have one light with a dimmer and LED bulb that doesn't dim properly, I might have to give that a shot over the weekend...


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

There must be 'dimmable' and 'sorta dimmable' LEDs.

I have 3 LED floods in a kitchen track. They came in a package
that claimed to be dimmable. The dimmer is the wall 
mounted rotary variable
resistance type. I get a very limited actual dimming,
and they go out completely before what one could
call DIM (very little light). Tho claimed to be 'warm'
white, the light is actually quite harsh.

Perhaps newer technology can make LEDs clearly
dimmable.

Don


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## Odyknuck (Dec 31, 2015)

Its my understanding that LEDs require a specific type of dimmer for proper operation. 

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