Detail: Streetlights
Atlas 2952 — Plan A
Originally I was going to use the vintage Atlas Goose Neck Lamps...
Chinese Cheapies I — Plan B
Then I came across a hundred or so cheap Chinese generic streetlights I'd been stockpiling for the now-defunct Black River & Western. They weren't doing any good sitting in a drawer, so I decided to use some of them instead.
Chinese Cheapies II — Plan C
After posing a couple of the above streetlights on the layout, I decided they looked "too good" amongst all of the period kits and models, so I switched to less accurate ones, which look the part of an early product but with modern LEDs. They're also stylistically more appropriate for a station area.
I received the new streetlights on 17 March 2021, and I confess they look much better than expected. But I was done buying new stuff, especially deliberately cheesy-looking items, so I just went with it, and installed them the next day.
Old Meets New
Just for fun, I retrofitted a pair of vintage Atlas gooseneck lamps with 0603 warm white LEDs, along with globes from old Miniatronic streetlights to make a pair of station parking lot lights. Everything was press-fit: the LEDs press-fit into the globes, and the globes press-fit into the gooseneck tubes. Kismet! Thus these lights are a microcosm of the layout as a whole: an aesthetic mix of old and new.
