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The Museum
of Road Signs and Signals
and street lighting
Le Village miniature
(Trooz)
Street lighting
Like all villages, the Miniature Village is lit at night. Nowadays, LEDs are used for streetlights, but it wasn't always like that. The Village's public lighting has gone through various stages of research, not always successful trials and unique techniques.
Let us tell you the story that began in Beaufays in the early 80s...
1- The first road lighting:
We are in Beaufays, in the early 80s... The idea was to light a simple dirt track, the first step towards real concrete roads. LEDs were not yet as popular as they are today... The idea of using simple small filament bulbs was therefore exploited.
This technique requires the use of relatively large soquet compared to the miniature environment of the first Village. The lampposts that were imagined had a rather large volume. We have no photographic archive of these lights...
The problems of rust in the soquet soon became apparent, and were all the more rapid and significant because the first Village was located in woodland where humidity was high. Although the bulb did not show any signs of oxidation, the soquet was quickly out of order... A number of ideas then emerged, one of which would also be used to manufacture traffic lights: the use of silicone. This involved enclosing the soquet in a silicone envelope, while placing a small seal at the base of the bulb. This technique produced good results, but the volume of the floor lamp remained just as imposing, with no real freedom in terms of its shape.
In addition to these technical problems, we also had to remember to get these small bulbs powered by 12 volts, which was more complicated than it is today (there was no internet). Finally, the efficiency of the ground lighting with these bulbs was far from optimal.
2- Finding a set of solutions:
Imagination and observation were the driving forces behind finding solutions to the problems explained above. The technique finally devised came from a blood collection tube cap and a 10 ml syringe.
By doing a little clever tinkering, it was possible to insert the stopper into the cylinder of the 10 ml syringe. This had a number of advantages: the light source was protected from humidity, the volume was much smaller, and the bulb wattage could be varied:
Example 1:
Two holes have been drilled in the plug with a hollow needle to allow the electrical wires to pass through. Here, the luminaire has a wattage of 1.2 W.
Example 2:
A 3-watt luminaire used mainly for lighting major roads. We had even designed a 5-watt luminaire (12 volts).
This technique, which was also used in the early days of the Trooz Miniature Village, made it possible to design lampposts with different coverings:
Ball" floor lamps.
Cover: translucent spheres used in sweet dispensers.
Ball" floor lamps.
Covering: ping-pong balls and chocolate cream pot bases.
Old-style floor lamps.
Cladding: made entirely by hand from 1mm-thick PVC. This floor lamp was still in the Village in 2005, 20 years after the invention of the technique described above.
Functional floor lamp.
Cladding: none. It is the plug/syringe assembly that serves as the bowl. This lamp was used to light the main axis of the Village. Here, it is combined with "ball" (ping-pong ball) streetlights used to light the pedestrian walkway.
Functional floor lamps (2005).
Cladding: imitation of Schréder Z range floor lamps.
Despite the arrival of LEDs in the design of the Village's public lighting, the technology used in the 1980s has been retained in two places: for public lighting and for a bollard light:
3- The arrival of LEDs:
According to our records, LEDs arrived in the Village around 2007. From 1995 to 2007, the streets of the Miniature Village of Trooz were still lit using the "cap/syringe" system.
This technology made it possible to design a wide range of street lamps, to miniaturise the equipment even further, and to achieve much better ground-level performance. Once again, we had to work on a trial-and-error basis to obtain high-quality, long-lasting streetlights.
Miniaturisation of an imitation GSO floor lamp from the Scréder group.
Ornamental floor lamps (2007).
Decoration: candelabra bases and basins made from sweet wrappers.
Functional floor lamp, imitation "Gruella, crosse inversée", company ELSA (Herstal), 2020.
Cover: blood collection tube.
Ball" lighting, LEDs,
Cover: ovoid lamp for a Christmas garland (2016).
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