Now that the WRM has most equipment under cover, I've struggled to get photographs of some of it. We generally keep carbarns dimly lit because UV is hard on the wooden cars - and that makes photography hard.

How do you handle it?

Do your visitors appreciate the covered storage, or do they complain about difficulty of photography?

I think the general public appreciates the barns, especially the shelter on a rainy day, or the shade on a hot one. As to lighting we have been steadily upgrading the lumens and candlepower for visibility and safety.

But I think it is only the fans (who are a marked minority of visitors) who complain about the barns. Even with better lighting, there are limited sightlines for pictures. I suppose one approach might be to make classic 3/4 view images on a sunny day, when equipment might be outdoors during switching or rearranging, and have them printed as postcards. Collections of those cards could be sold, or individually.

I think our primary mission should be to take steps to help insure the collections are preserved, and that means a roof.

Bob Kutella

Most digital cameras that cost more than $100 have a feature that allows you to increase the effective ASA setting at the expense of a slight degradation in image quality. If you shoot all your images in the largest format size it will usually hardly be noticable in the picture quality. The pocket digital I carry on the job has been able to take excellent pictures using higher ASA and manual shutter speed settings in just about every indoor railroad facility where I have used it. This is without having to resort to a tripod.

MX

You mention you keep the barn dimly lit mainly to reduce UV. FYI, the new LED lighting products, while more expensive to buy initially, have absolutely no UV component as do flourescents, there is no glass or mercury (like CFL's), and their operational expense is a fraction of either incandescent or flourescent.

Matt Bumgarner

Simple digital cameras are continuously, automatically adjusting themselves, including auto white balancing -- so color temperature is not the biggest problem.

The real issue is control, or lack of it over your camera. In a dimly lit carbarn these cameras will naturally use every means available, all at once, to produce an image. They will simultaneously open their iris to wide open, slow their shutter speed way down, and automatically deploy or fire a built-in flash. Some or all of these things usually combine to create a picture that is either washed out, blurred, closest subject/object too bright, etc., or a visual-cacophony of all of the above. (If you needed to cut a piece of wood you wouldn't use a saw and a hammer, right?!)

So if you do nothing else, my advice is to try to manually shut the flash off (that's the flash setting most cameras have showing an icon of a lightning bolt with a circle and line through it) and to simply improvise something to stabilize your camera on or against (something solid), in lieu of a tripod.

I think you'll find that the results can be quite pleasing.

Stephen
Director of Photography, Nikon School Video Series since 1989

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum's new carbarn has 14' wide viewing aisles and much brighter lighting than most other carbarns. Photography is very easy. However, most visitors, other than a few railfans, do not seem to be interested in car portraits. We do not consider that the UV issue is important enough to worry about as the lights are on at full intensity for only about 200 hours per year. (we have one 1 hour tour of the building per day). If the building were open all day during our operating season, the lights would be on about 900 hours per year, still far less UV exposure than cars stored outdoors.

The lighting also has a 25% setting for access to the building for errands, etc. This was done primarily to save energy.

How many of us building or considering building carbarns choose to include skylights, clerestories or other historically proven forms of natural lighting?

dave

I think all the barns at IRM have either skylights or side light panels at the top of the walls. Even those 30 years old! The plastic skylight panels have always been problematic with failure and leaking, so as replacement roofs go on, they are not being replaced, and in some cases the walls get chopped and refitted with the sidelights.

Bob Kutella

The visitor center we built a few years ago has a full clearstory. The building looks great in terms of appearance, but the clearstory is a huge heat sink in the winter months when we heat the building. We have to heat the building because of the sprinkler system. We still use some lighting inside the display hall as the clearstory does not light it up enough to give the best display of our cars. If I were building it again today, I would give serious thought to how authentic to make the building look versus practical issues like heating it. I would probably nix the clearstory and go for a more modern looking building rather than try to recreate a historic looking building. People are there for the museum, not the building that houses the museum. The front of our building extends out for another 60 feet as a trainshed. I am trying to sell everyone on the idea of having it glassed in. Imagine driving down the road at night and seeing these incredibly restored trains and trolleys lit up with some indirect lighting.

Ceiling fans in the clerestory will circulate the reservoir of heated air back towards the floor.

I look forward to the day that solar power roof panels become so cost effective that we can power our own lighting from the sun hitting the roof - and we have some pretty large roofs to take advantage of. It's already pretty good for heating water.

dave

There is a company called "Big Ass Fans" which makes these large ceiling fans. Also, I believe if you had a dry pipe system, the sprinkler lines could be below freezing and not crack... whether or not they work at that temperature I don't know.

Many building designs from the 80s through today created buildings which were much larger than practical need, and costs for heating/cooling seemed to not matter as much. I hope that is finally changing - but I'm not sure how a large gallery space for museum displays are best designed to look cool but not cost an arm and a leg to operate. A glassed wall to show off your trains sounds like a neat idea but glass tends to be the worst insulator. Plus you better have a darn good security system to keep the vandals at the gate. Good luck, just trying to help...
O. Anderson

Dry pipe sprinklers work in below freezing temperatures. The water will not freeeze in the piping as it is moving whenever the system is activated. The problem with dry pipe sprinklers is if air pressure is lost for enough time for the system to leak down when it is below freezing, the system will fill and then freeze if not drained soon enough.

going back to the display barn at the WRM; I have given tours in there and will continue to do so.

So far nobody has commented about the light level which is delibrately fairly low to protect wood and paint.

Most of the time there is no light at all in the Jenson Display Barn.

Currently, there is a Sacramento northern caboose in the Shop getting new wood work and paint and it will become part of the electric freight train that is displayed in the building.

Ted Miles