I saw this product and thought it was really silly/stupid, but then decided I should run it by this forum.

1) I can see a use for lamps on piers, but not on pilings.

2) That electrical box looks like it's below high-tide level, and I don't know what it is supposed to connect to.

Does this possibly have any "grounding" in reality?

Charles

Good question, no idea though..

maybe the electrical box is there so the mermaids can have easy access for maintenance???

This one is indeed an enigma to me. If someone would put a mooring line of a vessel around that, the wiring would be destroyed.

I thought it was listed as a soviet industrial lamp rather than a "harbour" lamp?

Paul

It depicts a lamp post after a huge flood in Moscow...

Joking aside and to be honest, it seems to my a quite silly product. That's just my opinion anyway

More of that... Why is it defined as "Soviet"?

Pass! That is just what it is listed as on various sellers!

Paul

Mig just lists it as "Soviet lamp" on their own site, but I thought adding "harbor" would make it a bit more descriptive and accurate, as this is obviously their intention - although clearly based on someone's imagination vs. reality.

Thanks to all for confirming my suspicions. When I first saw it, I thought it looked cool, but then I started thinking about it . . .

Charles

Looks like something has been lost in translation :



Frenchy

That's interestng Frenchy, I wonder if Mig is confusing the issue with their product photo? I can see this as an industrial lamp on a wood pole, and separate harbor pilings (that would look much better with the rope not cast on). Maybe someone in their marketing department had the idea to combine them into a single piece?

Charles

I just noticed that in Dioramas on the "My KV-1 dioramas: Part I" thread, a guy made his own lamp post(s) just like the Mig one. I'm wondering if I read it wrong as pilings. Has anyone seen any photos of Soviet street lamp posts perhaps being "protected" by having other poles wrapped around it? I'm not sure how much good they'd do unless they were dug into the ground.

I'm used to seeing a single new pole wrapped onto an older one that's in danger of falling (usually from lots of new hardware being added), but never anything like the Mig kit. It sure looked like harbor pilings to me, partly due to the very heavy weathering of the wood, but maybe it is meant as something else?

Charles

'Harbour' may be misleading, I think this lamp is used some place with lots of heavy vehicles. This might be a harbour (dont think ships, think the trucks transporting wares from/to the ships), but might be a railway station, an industrial plant, agricultural machine depot, or even an armour garrison.
The 'piling' is actually railway sleepers and tree trunks added to protect the lamp pole against careless truck/tractor/tank drivers

I cannot speak for MIG, but Id assume its a detail he has spotted when researching. Its possible that the logs were built around it to protect it .... if the pole stood solo in the middle of an open area, it would knocked very easily. I like this item ... in fact I have it.

Alfred - Where are you seeing the railway sleepers - I only see round supports? I think I'll continue to believe it's some product developer's invention until I see a proto photo - in any sort of installation.

I liked it at first also - until I started thinking about it, fruitlessly trying to discover a photo of one in use, and finding it less and less credible.

Maybe its just the picture, but I see the one with the switch a little bit rectangular. Old wooden sleepers can be any shape, as on the pics. Dont know, it was just an idea

For a second, I thought you meant your third railway photo showing a switch ;-) BTW - where's the one going green? I know there are plenty of funky ties out there, and not just in someone's garden. I don't know about other places around the world, but some low-budget American logging lines just laid rail on cut tree trunks,



and others - called "pole roads", ran engines and cars with wide, dual-flanged wheels on log "rails".



I took "the switch" to be some sort of junction box, but it's also a part of what made me dubious. I can't recall if I saw any sellers calling it a harbor lamp or not, but I couldn't help but think of pier pilings when I saw this - I suppose also because the rope lashing looks so nautical.

I have written to MIG asking if there is a prototype, and requested a photo if they have one. We'll see - if they send me one, I'll post it here and admit I was wrong.

I've done all the Google Image searches that I care to. If anyone has books or photo stashes they want to look through, go for it.

Do not know, just remembered the old tracks I saw here and there and googled some images. I think I saw before the green one as part of those ,,beautiful nature" picture collections everyone got 1000 in a week from social networking site friends.


I always loved those old forestry stuff, slides, rope-railway all from wood (except the rope ofc ) you have to be creative if you have nothing but unprocessed tree trunks. And in the SU most of the railway building work had been made by labour camp prisoners, who had to follow strict production plans. Making sleepers not-so-rectangular might be among the less harmful short-cuts they made to achieve the plan (see Solzhenitsyns Ghulag book)).


One more thing: either real or fake, when you place this thing into a diorama, you have to connect that box to the electricity network somehow unless it is a mini nuclear power plant:)