Ebay seems to be full of "G-Scale stuff". Unfortunately when it comes to street lamps, most of the offers feature items that are not really G-Scale. Lamp posts smaller than 10cm (4in) are barely taller than people figures. I was sure this would not look right...
That's when I found this auction:
It promised much, much taller street lamps. The price was a little higher but still acceptable. And so I purchased a set of 4 items for less than $15 including shipping. The merchandise arrived a few weeks later...
The packaging is typical for cheap items from China. The product is however well protected and everything arrived intact.
The set consists of four lamp posts and four resistors that we need to solder ourselves. Interestingly the seller sent me a wrong set of resistors but realized his mistake, contacted me and sent another package with the correct ones. Good service!
I really wanted to open the model to see what's inside. It is however well glued and I gave up as I was afraid of damaging it.
The model is made of plastic that feels rather cheap. On the other hand, it also feels like the low-quality material was used to produce a rather detailed and properly constructed item. Nothing falls apart and there's definitely no "crappy" feeling. Still - the cheap plastic brings doubts about the possible outdoor performance.
The lamp is indeed taller than other Ebay products. It measures around 18cm (7 in).
The resistors provided with the lamps are 150 Ohm. This means that at 16V a single lamp would consume around 100mA. This seemed like a lot to me...
And indeed - with the default resistor the lamps are very bright. I've decided to experiment a little and see what brightness I would consider valid. Here is a comparison of the light produced for different resistance values.
In the end I've decided to go with 470 Ohm resistors. After installing the lamps on the layout, I can confirm the decision was good. The light is still very bright but not blinding in a night setting.
Here's the setup just before dusk...
...and here it is right after the sunset.
One thing I do not like about the lamps is the fact that their light is not directed to the ground but to the sides. This means that even though they're very bright, the streets and the sidewalks are not really that well lit.
The overall outcome is still very satisfying. The lamps look nice and the part of the layout were they got installed became definitely much more interesting now. I'm going to wait till spring and see if they survive the winter. If they do, I will buy many more in order to light up all my roads.
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