Lighting on the cheap.

On my home layout I decided to light the buildings. Why not use a string of lights from a dollar store. The ones I  had on hand take 3 AA batteries and have an off on switch. On my first try I soon found out they can only be hooked up a specific way, after you cut each lights wires to add longer feeders. The lights I used have 20 lights, wired in parallel.

To add longer feeders I needed to find a way to known the correct way to reconnect them. Looking at each light I noticed that anode + was narrow and the cathode - was wider.

The one on the right is the cathode, so all the dark wire feeders were soldered to this side and the light feeder was added to anode side.
The first area I lighted was the port town. Larger buildings had 2 or 3 lights and small ones had only 1light added.

Soon found out light escapes everywhere. I will have to go back and fix that. Will also have to figure out how to add a night light for overall lighting.