Whitemoor has an awful lot of quite distinctive modern lamps - any picture shows them quite well. I need at least three, probably more.

I was thinking initially about using this N-scale Viessmann lamp since they should only about 50mm tall in 4mm, but I wanted to try and build one first since the shape looked relatively straightforward, and the Viessmann lamp doesn't have the wider section (cable cabinet?) at the base of the post. I bought some 3.2mm square brass tube (since the inside dimension was small enough for a 1.8mm "lighthouse" LED) and a couple of lengths of telescoping round tube (I think 1.6 and 2.4mm) from the model shop on my way home this afternoon. The reason for doing this now, when I should be weathering track etc., is that I'm going to be in Germany for a couple of days in the near future, so I wanted to know whether or not I need the Viessmann lamps before I get there - they're cheaper there!

Anyway, back to the home-made lamp - it's all brass, soldered with a 20-watt iron and electronics solder. I've never built anything like this before - I used superglue for my one etched relay box - so you can probably imagine I'm pleased as punch at how it turned out

The shade is U section cut from the square tube by filing away two edges and peeling out the resulting strip with pliers. I then filed down the web to the base of the U at both ends, one straight, and one diagonal, so I could fold them up to make a sort of trough. I didn't get the diagonal end matched up very well, but I filled both ends with solder and filed them down flat. I've had a go at adding some of the bevels from the prototype, although I think I need a vice to get the long slope of the sides since I can't hold it steady enough with fingers! The sharper slope at the back was easier and is worth doing since that seems to be quite a strong feature on the real thing:

Once cleaned up, the lighthouse LED was a push fit into the channel (only in one direction though) so mounting the shade was pretty easy. Since the post is quite visible at the back of the shade, I fixed the LED so it was nearly flush with the top of the post. One leg is trimmed very short and has a length of fine wire (Howes decoder wire) soldered to it. I don't have any really fine heat-shrink, so I've tried to keep the insulation neat, and theres a strip of masking tape to ensure the end of the wire can't touch the shade. The insulated wire runs down the post in what I assume is the usual way, with the post itself being the other conductor.

The LED isn't exactly discrete, but it's not too visible below the shade. It would likely be possible to do something better with a surface mount LED, but they look difficult to solder! I'm also thinking that some kind of diffuser (clear plastic tube/sprue sanded matt?) would make it look a bit cleaner.

For the base of the pole, there's a shorter length of the larger tube with a taper filed into the top - it just slides over the inner. I haven't cut anything to length yet, but I suspect I'll trim the outer tube exactly to size, and leave the inner tube long for planting.

Construction time was a bit over an hour, plus half an hour for a false start on the shade - I tried using small snips rather than filing to cut the webs and ended up with mangled awfulness! I also learned a useful lesson about LEDs - you need a limiting resistor even on if you're using 2 AA batteries So I burnt out my first LED and had to desolder it and mount a new one. Ah well It looks quite nice lit up though, and probably cost about a pound to make. Now I just have to make two more, which should be interesting since the shade dimensions for this one are eyeballed rather than planned properly - I wasn't expecting to get something I could use, to be honest.

Proof it works