11/6/09 Let there be (even more) light!

I made another spur of the moment trips to Hobby Lobby today and once again found train stuff marked down. In that spirit I snapped up two packs of Model Power streetlights.  One pack was Y-shaped double lights while the other was gooseneck lights. My initial reaction to the Y-shaped lights was “are they sure these are N Scale and not HO?” They’re up to the second floor of Coverall Paints but they are still a nice bit of detailing on the lower level. They went in without any real difficulty. I just punched a hole in the foam board, ran the wire and glued them down with FTG.

With that out of the way, I turned to the goosenecks. I put them on the upper level along the road that ruins along the back of the town. That’s when the real fun started. First I added length to the supplied wires. It’s much easier to do this at the workbench than in situ. Next it was the same procedure of punch hole, run wire, glue lamp. Now the one problem with this arrangement is the upper-level wiring is enclosed in a two-inch compartment. I had to fumble around and find the end of the wires in said compartment. 

When I finally got them hooked up and tested them, they stayed lit for about two seconds, then darkness. My layout was hit with a blackout. It was obvious my MRC throttle pack wasn’t up to the task of powering all those lights.  At first I thought about dividing the lights between two trainset power packs. However I quickly discarded that idea. In search of a real solution I decided to go poke through my G-Scale gear and my Aristocraft 4-amp power supply and controller. At first I hooked up just the power supply but the lights were “turn night into day birght.” So I took the controller and hooked the lights up to the  DC terminals. I tell you this thing powers all my lights without breaking a sweat and I can dim them or shut them off completely now too. 

                                                     Now That's a power supply:

Now it was at this point I noticed only two out of three streetlights were lit. I opened up the access panel and was horrified by what I saw. The insulation on the recalcitrant lamp’s wires was burnt off. There was also a scorch mark on the foam board. I decided to cut my loses and remove the lamp. I’ll gladly trade a lamp for not burning down the apartment building any day of the week.