Hard-Wired Depot

The depot is very nearly done.  Roofing shingles are glued down, the roof has been painted, and has been mounted to the structure itself.  All that remains is to install a chimney, some flashing along the roof/wall joints, and then some weathering.  As soon as those last few things are completed, it will be ready for placement on the layout.  That placement includes hooking up power for the interior lights, which is the topic of this post.

Obviously, due to the amount of work I'm putting into these structures, I want to be able to reuse them on a future layout, or even take them to show at a contest or other event.  For that reason, I won't be permanently mounting any of them to the layout.  I'll also need to be able to easily connect/disconnect any power going to the structures.  After giving this some thought, I've settled on the cheapest and easiest means of doing so that I could come up with - the 9-volt battery connector.

I purchased 50 of these for $3.00, so they fit within my modeling budget.  They're easy to install, and easy to connect or disconnect.

They're also easy to conceal - just dig an extra-large hole under each structure, and stuff the whole thing through the hole.  The building sits on top, completely hiding the wiring and the connector.