Lighting students from across the UK got their first taste of working under pressure - as part of a competition to light a railway carriage in less than two hours.Six teams were invited to take part in the National Railway Museum's annual ‘Locos in a Different Light’ event - and ETC was on hand to provide equipment and support.
ETC's associate regional manager for UK and Ireland, Jeremy Roberts, brought a range of Selador Desire LED fixtures and six lighting control desks. He said: "I was really impressed with the imagination and technical ability of the teams. Many of the students had seen ETC SmartFade and Congo jr desks before, but fewer had seen ETC's recent Congo Kid and Element. The programming syntaxes would have been familiar to them, since they're part of the Eos or Congo families, so they were soon up to speed."
Congo Kid has 40 master faders and all the controls from the Congo built into a small desk. Element, which was designed for modest rigs and maximum hands-on fader control, is the smallest of the Eos line of consoles.
ETC Selador Desire comes in a range of models to ensure lighting designers get precisely the look they need. The Desire Fire fixture offers the warm red-orange-yellow palette, while the Desire Ice provides soulful shades of blue. Studio HD, Studio Tungsten and Studio Daylight provide three different ways of producing powerful white light; while Lustr+ and Vivid offer a vast colour range for spectrally balanced saturated and tinted light.
The Locos in a Different Light competition was devised by Ed Fagan, curriculum manager in the performing arts faculty at Amersham College, who suggested that a competition could provide the ideal stimulus for the design of a permanent lighting scheme. This year's winners from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts gained not only the recognition of having won, but also a chance to drive a steam train. In a separate public vote, Rose Bruford also picked up an honourable mention.
Head of Knowledge & Collections at the National Railway Museum Helen Ashby said:
"The competition gives students a unique opportunity to light a developing area of the museum and potentially have their ideas incorporated into the long term plans for the space. We enjoyed seeing our collection brought to life through light and welcomed over 1,000 visitors into the museum on Saturday evening to experience the displays."