Evening lighting in carriages

[tsr]

I'm not sure they are that *bright* in dim mode. They are just an extremely unpleasant, very high colour temperature which is a bluish colour.

Normally, "daylight" lighting is considered to be roughly the same as sunlight on a cloudy day. From experience, a cloudy day is much warmer a light colour than these. That colour is only generally used in settings where precise colour differentiation is needed, not a setting where it's supposed to be relaxing.

An utterly hideous piece of design, which, when coupled with the blue/purple interior, makes what is a very nice interior otherwise feel horribly cold.

Lots of newer train toilet modules have similar problems. The LED lights in a Class 700 toilet will make anyone who hasn't got an impressive tan look very pale and unwell!

I quite agree that lighting "temperature" and warmth is very important. That said, some people don't like warmer, more "orange" lighting. My family actively dislike the LED Warm White light bulbs I recently installed at home, even when they are relaxing in the lounge in the evening - much preferring blueish white LEDs. Visitors, on the other hand, invariably comment on how warm and "cosy" the lighting is. You can't win sometimes!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I quite agree that lighting "temperature" and warmth is very important. That said, some people don't like warmer, more "orange" lighting. My family actively dislike the LED Warm White light bulbs I recently installed at home, even when they are relaxing in the lounge in the evening - much preferring blueish white LEDs. Visitors, on the other hand, invariably comment on how warm and "cosy" the lighting is. You can't win sometimes!

I have warm white throughout my house except the kitchen which has a fairly cold white (not quite as cold as GWR HST lighting, but not far off), the reason is that the walls are a terracotta colour which looks nice in daylight but overwhelmingly easyJet under a more yellow light, so they warm it - it'd look horrible if the walls were, say, white or blue.

But a kitchen is a utility space which requires bright, clear lighting (typically in the past it was the only place in a home you would find a bare fluorescent tube). A train carriage is a place to sit, relax and enjoy the journey. It's out of place there.

That said, you can do a relaxing light using cool/daylight white - but it needs to be very much an indirect background light at low intensity. I find the Irish Rail DMUs do this reasonably. GWR HSTs don't.

The other thing about trains...how many of us sit at home daytime with the lights on? The U-Bahn units in Hamburg have, for years, used photocells to only light when it's dark / in tunnels. Buses don't have the lights on during the day. It's wasteful.

 

[radamfi]

This is where coach travel is superior to train travel as coach drivers normally switch the lighting to a low level while in motion and only put them on bright when at a boarding or alighting stop.

On a train it isn't necessary to put the lights on brightly when each seat has its own reading light. Otherwise, what's the point of each seat having its own light? I usually turn them all off if I'm first on the train.

 

[Alteran Ancient]

There is a "Dim Lights" button on the guards' panels of the Electrostars - I've seen it used in the past when the guard has decreed that the weather is particularly sunny. It could also possibly be used in the evening if they so wished. But I usually find that the lighting on the Electrostars is quite warm anyway.

 

[ejstubbs]

I'm not sure they are that *bright* in dim mode. They are just an extremely unpleasant, very high colour temperature which is a bluish colour.

Normally, "daylight" lighting is considered to be roughly the same as sunlight on a cloudy day. From experience, a cloudy day is much warmer a light colour than these. That colour is only generally used in settings where precise colour differentiation is needed, not a setting where it's supposed to be relaxing.

An utterly hideous piece of design, which, when coupled with the blue/purple interior, makes what is a very nice interior otherwise feel horribly cold.

According to the Wikipedia article about colour temperatures, overcast daylight is ~6500K (this is also what B&Q quote for their 'daylight' LED bulbs), fluorescent tubes are ~5000K, warm white LEDs are ~3000K and standard incandescent bulbs are ~2400K. So for ambient lighting outside of a utility workspace fluorescent tubes are very harsh compared to tungsten or warm white LED bulbs.

I agree that low-level ambient light with individual reading lights, like you get on aircraft, generally works well.

 

[Harbouring]

Got on a HST at Taunton on Tuesday and the lights were very bright, very disorientating too compared to the dim light at the station. The lights on the 150 I had to endure to Pompey were just as bad. Travelling on 444's out of Waterloo at night never seems as bad as that.

I am quite sensitive to bright light as are some people on the autistic spectrum so I think it would put some people off travelling late at night because of it.

Perhaps an ambient lighting carriage might become an option in the future as more trains are used that have LED lighting, similar to the quiet carriage so people would have a choice if they want to sit in knowing lights would be dimmer but to avoid if you want to read/work etc.

 

[tsr]

There is a "Dim Lights" button on the guards' panels of the Electrostars - I've seen it used in the past when the guard has decreed that the weather is particularly sunny. It could also possibly be used in the evening if they so wished. But I usually find that the lighting on the Electrostars is quite warm anyway.

I did post that upthread...

 

[Mag_seven]

The GWR HST lights are far too bright. Combined with those awful tinted windows all you can see from the window when its dark is a reflection of yourself. The best lighting used to be in the BR Intercity Mark IIIB First vehicles - the resulting ambience was second to none.

 

[greyman42]

Could the issue of identifying people committing crime using the on board CCTV be a factor ?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Could the issue of identifying people committing crime using the on board CCTV be a factor ?

I don't know, but the Pendolino has pleasant subdued lighting and has CCTV.

CCTV works well enough in the dark using IR, anyway.

 

[gallafent]

I'm not sure they are that *bright* in dim mode. They are just an extremely unpleasant, very high colour temperature which is a bluish colour.

Fair point re brightness vs colour temp, it's sometimes hard for the human brain to tell the difference, what with our clever auto-iris and colour-balance systems, and we do tend to percieve “high colour temp” as “bright”. In an office it's nicest to have a mixture, I've found! This effect can be really confusing when one finds oneself in a “bright” environment finding it quite hard to read, because in fact it's quite a dim daylight-colour bulb …

Back to the GWR HST refit: being unable to see out in the evening is also not helped by the strongly tinted windows too, of course, … so what we really need is to get rid of the tint, and add venetian blinds for sunny days. Now we're talking

(And I agree with the rest of your post!)

--
Bill.

 

[bunnahabhain]

HST's still have a dimmer setting - not that our TOC's choose to use them. They prefer the German POW camp searchlight style of ambient lighting in my experience. I wonder if these new trains will have a dimmer switch ?

Same here, in my training I was told "We don't run half lit trains, if you find one on the dim setting somebody has been fiddling with it, so turn it back onto full".

 

[Mikey C]

On airliners, they dim the lights, but then everyone has a reading light as well. Coaches have a reading light also, besides I imagine fewer people work/read on coaches in the evening than on trains, when many people want to read or work?

Lighting is a very personal thing, I can imagine massive arguments if passengers were allowed to change the settings themselves!

 

[3141]

I'm sure most loco hauled mk1 compartment stock had a dim/bright switch in both classes located above the sliding entrance door also.

You're right, they did. Close to where many of them also had the words "Lacewood, England" to show what sort of wood had been used in the carriage.

 

[route101]

The difference in lighting is noticeable from scotrails unrefurbished 170s to the refurbished 170s . Pendos arent too bright either.

 

[tom1649]

I've been on a 222 Meridian back from London at night with just the halogens and reading lights switched on, it was a relaxing experience.