When we were finishing the basement, I negotiated a portion for my train room. I think my wife accepted that there was going to be a train room in this house.. she knows me.
We had drop ceilings installed with recessed lighting. This is handy as the lights can be directed, so I can point them to illuminate portions of the layout rather than lighting the floor. They aren’t 100% pointable but it’s better than nothing.
Unfortunately, the train room has a plenum for the air conditioner running across the room. Our contractor built a box around the plenum and we were unable to recess any lights in this area. My Cargill grain elevator peninsula runs under the plenum and it had a dark patch in the middle where none of the ceiling lights could reach. This has bothered me, but not any more!
I spotted these puck lights at Costco and knew I wanted to give them a try.
There are six in the package, and they use AAA batteries so there is no wiring involved. I used 3M Command sticky pads to attach them to the ceiling to avoid any marks.
They come with a handy-dandy remote to turn them on and off. There are a lot of functions on this remote!
I really only use two – the big green ON button and the big red OFF button. You can vary the intensity but I want them full power. You can also set a sleep timer using the bottom four buttons, which could be handy to avoid leaving them on all the time and draining the batteries.
The remote is quite small and I’m concerned that I will lose it. So far I’ve been leaving it on the layout but I’m going to glue a tether onto it so I can hang it somewhere for safekeeping.
They aren’t as bright as I would like, and they are a bit blueish, but they are better than what I had. I used just those lights for photographing my Switching Cargill post. These puck lights will do for now.
