Roomettes…

I finally received the interior rooms from Roomettes Lighting. I didn’t realize that the company was located in Ontario ( and no, I don’t have a problem with Canada, I used to work for a company based in Toronto ). It’s just mail between the two usually takes awhile. In this case, almost two weeks. So if you want to order, you should know this in advance.

The other thing you should know ( and it’s not a big deal ) but they only accept payment by Paypal. Again, not a big deal, I’ve had a Paypal account for years and it’s usually one of the payment options on all websites. Just was a little surprised when it was they only option.

The sets that I ordered were the Broadway Apartments set for the Walthers Parkview Terrace Background Building( 933-3177 ). I had bought and assembled two of these quite awhile ago and was getting ready to throw some lights in them when I came across the Roomettes Lighting website. I thought individually lit rooms with interiors showing would add far more interest. Just took awhile to get around to ordering them.

Finally here and what you get…

I ordered them on May 25th and when I got the confirmation and shipping information a day or two later I was surprised to see the estimated arrival date of June 10th. In addition I was a bit thrown when I saw the tracking info from Canada Post. That’s when I did a quick check of where the company was located. If you’ve ever tracked a shipment ( and who hasn’t now that everyone gives it to you and it’s easy ), you’re going to find Canada Posts tracking info a little vague and even more so once it hits the States.

But, it finally arrived.

They finally arrived.

Opening them up and it’s what I expected as they have a pretty good description of what  you are getting, plus pictures of the rooms.

So what was included in this set? Well you get ten rooms plus ten Woodland Scenics LED Stick-On Lights ( JP5741 ). The four sheets of rooms are glossy and printed on heavy paper ( cardstock ). There are kitchens, living rooms,  bathrooms, bedrooms and an entry (I think).  They are die cut and release form the sheet with a quick pass with a razor blade to cut the little tabs holding them in place. In addition the rooms are perforated along the fold lines.

The Roomettes set Broadway Apartments for the Walther’s Parkview Terrace Background building.
What’s included: the rooms.
What’s included: the Woodland Scenics Just Plug LED lights.
Putting them together…

In the instructions they note that there are column numbers by each  room. In this case, 1 through 6. This matches up to the six columns of windows (from top to bottom) on the building. I decided to place the rooms as displayed on Roomettes website for the first building. I’ll mix it up on the second building.

As I said, they pop out pretty easily. A quick fold of the tabs, a little white glue and they were together. OK, so I had to hold the tabs while the glue set, but they do go together pretty quickly. They also suggest running a little glue along the perforated edges for strength and light blocking. Did this also. I numbered the rooms with a column number and a floor number just to make placement easier.

The assembled rooms marked for where they are going.
the rooms assembled, pre light installation.

I thought about ( and they suggest it in the instructions ) of adding some 3Dness to the rooms. An example would be there is a headboard in the bedroom, I thought about adding the rest of the bed. Or adding addition chairs in other rooms. Seemed a bit much for something that is against the backdrop. And the rooms have a pretty good 3D look on their own. Would do this on something with bigger windows and near the front.

I added the lights. Their suggestion is to use a high quality tape to hold the lights in place. I opted to glue them in place. They also suggest painting the outside of the rooms black to block light. I decided to wrap the rooms with painters tape. Reinforces the lights and blocks light. Probably not necessary, but did it anyhow.

The rooms – lit and ready to install.

The last step before installation was to dress up the rest of the windows, the ones without actual rooms.

Adding window treatments to the “unoccupied” rooms.
Adding the rooms…

After the other windows were taken care of it was time to add the rooms to the apartment building.

Nothing special here, I used Elmers Tacky Glue to glue the rooms in place. The fit was perfect. This is evident in that the corner rooms have cut outs in the side walls for the windows on the building sides. They lined right up.

The rooms with the lights and the outdoor lights ready to be hooked up.

In addition to the room lights I also added the Woodland Scenics Just Plug Entry Wall Lights (JP5655).  Roomettes had shown these on their finished model on the stairway landings and I liked the look. This is something that would have been far easier before the stairways were added. Spent a whole night getting them fitted in place working around the stairways and support posts.

Next up was what to do with the wires. With ten room lights and four wall lights there were plenty of them. First thought was to simply pull them through the floor and hook up everything under the layout. Bad idea, as the underside of the layout is always pretty congested. Looking at the empty space in the building I began wondering how much I could fit into that space. My plan was to hook everything into 3 Port Sharing Devices (JP5681) and then wire those into a Light Hub (JP5701) . From there the Light Hub would wire into an Expansion Hub (JP5702) for power.

What I could fit into the back was the three Port Sharing Devices. This cut down the number of wires from 14 to 3. Acceptable.

wires bundled and plugged into the port sharing devices.

Hooked the 3 wires into the Light Hub and then it was time to power it all up. I used the Woodland Scenics Power Supply (JP5770) and this is what it looks like…

The apartment building lit.

In planning the lights I had looked at a couple of options. One was to add the Sequencing Light Hub, but I felt that the lights would sequence far more often than normal. The second thing I thought would be cool that is offered by Roomettes is a LED RGB module to simulate a TV.  The module itself is inexpensive, not so much the controller for it. At $100+, I could buy a real TV.

And it’s ready for the layout.

Now on to the other building. And after that I will look the layout over to see if I can add a set to something close o the front with larger windows or open doors to show off the interior. The kits are reasonably priced and I would encourage you give one a try.

I would like to take this time to apologize for the amount of time it took to finish this post. Between the actual work and committing the work to the written word, it has been close to 2 months. For whatever reason, the number of household projects has been far more than usual this year. And there are still plenty to go. I will update you as I find time to get things done. If nothing else fall and winter are on there way and that is definitely a return to the basement.

Till later, stay safe and Happy Modeling …

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