[I originally posted this over in the Layout forum late last night. So, if you’ve already read this before, forgive me.]
Don’t you just love learning those practical and valuable lessons that stick with you for a lifetime? Well, I learned one last night.
Both of the 1.5V GOR bulbs in one of my scratch-built exterior light poles burned out so I sat down to replace them. (One had been burned out for a while, while the other one hung on. I just waited to both went before bothering to change them.) It took me a little time to remove the old wiring and bulbs, clean out the glue from and repaint the light shades, prebend and feed the new lights through the light pole, and resolder both lights so that they were wired in parallel.
When I feed both sets of wires for the light pole through the 1/8" hole in the foam base to hook it up to the connector switch, I discovered that the light pole was a little too loose in the hole and was slipping down. To fix the problem I wrapped a few turns of transparent tape around the base of the pole to stiffen it up. Worked liked a charm! [:)] Anyhow, as I was getting ready to position the light pole in the hole again, unfortunately the wires for both lights gently brushed across the mainline and…you guessed it - blink! - 14V of DC said bye-bye to two 1.5V bulbs.
The funny thing is, when the lights came on momentarily, it wasn’t even a bright flash - just on and off - as if you had quickly flipped the switch to the power strip. Hoping that it wasn’t enough to fry the bulbs, I finished connecting up the light pole to the slide connectors. Nothing.
After checking and rechecking both light wires on other connectors to make sure that there wasnt’ a bad connection to this particular slide connector, I got out my new auto-ranging multimeter that I bought from Sears ($18, on sale!) and check