Merkur 8986 Lamp post

Santa was good for me and gave me a Merkur 8986 Lamp post. So, I naturally felt obliged to construct it immediately and shed some light on those dark days. The lamp post itself is easily constructed with two parts of the post, one goose neck with cast iron details, four screws, 4 washers and 4 nuts.

As you all can see, this is really nice 32 cm (13 inch) high lamp post. The manual is special treat, since it is written in Czech language. Nevertheless, I do understand loose parts and the need to solder a LED to wires.

The soldering itself and shrinking of the insulator is all peanuts and easily done. What annoys me slightly is that Merkur does not mention that this is a 3 V, 10 mA LED. They could even have written that down in Czech language in case they felt like it. Than I would not have to measure the LED to find this out myself.

Anyway, finding a new battery for the multimeter is always an issue, but whenever you insert a new one this makes all electrical measurements a lot easier. The base plate is connected to the lamp post by four slots and tabs (very tin-plate but unconventional for Merkur). As a general tip I would advice everybody to bend the tabs only after you have juggled the wire through the post.

Since my base current is roughly 19 V AC, I needed a (19-3)/0.01 ~1600 Ohm resistor. Well I have plenty of 1500 Ohm resistors and these work as well, So I soldered one in the wire, so that I can hide the lot under the base plate.

So, then it was time to test the Merkur lamp post. And as you all can see, it is a beautiful made lamp post with a Czech art deco flair to it. Furthermore, it is a truly tall structure, even longer than the Lionel 153 Semaphore.

After a few days of consideration, I nailed the lamp post down besides the station building.

Well Merry X-mas and jolly good new year to all.