Winter/Christmas Lemax Things showing up at Michael's

[USNRol]

Well, I finally started seeing some things that might work on my Christmas/PE layout at Michael's this weekend.  I bought three sets of the street lights below...They we're 7.99 for a set of 4 lights.  They're LED's and run off an included 3 volt (2 AA's) battery pack with on/off switch.  I'm pretty happy with them as is but would like to be able to run them off the Train transformer rather than chewing up AA batteries.  Anyone got experience making such a conversion?  I'm thinking I'd need a rectifier or would they run on ac ok?

http://www.lemaxcollection.com/product_details.jsp?choice=1&catId=23&themeId=&pid=1616&curr=21&currPage=2

4" Gas Lantern Street Lamp (Item no. 64498) Height : 4-1/8 inches (10.5cm)

Also saw this house which I plan to get.

Morrison House (Item no. 75504) Height : 7-3/8 inches (18.8cm)

It was priced at 34.99.

Anyway, thought I'd tip the group off since it'll probably get sold out quick!

Roland

[darianj]

Thanks for the tip.  I'm going to try to pick up some of those lamps tomorrow.

[rogruth]

If the lamps are 3 volts,you could wire them in series and run them from a transformer.Six would be 18 and eight would be 24.Eight would not be as bright but should last longer.I have done this with no problem.

[gwg50]

thanks for the info

[Bob Keller]

Like trains, you only have so much room on a layout for buildings (ceramic or plastic), but Friday I picked up the S&H Green Stamp Redemption Center - which is supposed to be an exclusive for Michaels. It is a pretty neat store, but I'll need to expand the depth of my city to accomodate it.

In the Halloween display, they also had a pretty neat pirate ghose ship!

Marv Laster at ehobbytools.com has the complete Lemax line (minus, of course, Michaels exclusive products) online.

[dougdagrump]

Roland,

Most, if not all, of the Lemax stuff can be powered by an AC adapter. If there is a jack on the battery box for the street lights it can also. Normally the adapters will be hanging on the racks next to the shelf displays. If senility hasn't set in to bad I think they have two adapters with different output ratings, so be sure to check the battery box for requirements. I use these for most of my Lemax halloween stuff.

P.S. We need to get Bob to add a jack-o-lantern smiley.

[Bob Keller]

Say, I still can't even see the Smiley icons ...

[cpsteamer]

Finally got into Michaels last Friday. The one thing that turned my crank was the Undead THEATER. Had a nice reasonably small footprint Of course they were sold out and unsure when/if they would be getting more.

 Ken

[USNRol]

Roland,

Most, if not all, of the Lemax stuff can be powered by an AC adapter. If there is a jack on the battery box for the street lights it can also. Normally the adapters will be hanging on the racks next to the shelf displays. If senility hasn't set in to bad I think they have two adapters with different output ratings, so be sure to check the battery box for requirements. I use these for most of my Lemax halloween stuff.

Yea, I saw those.  The lights I bought do have the phono jack for use with the power packs you mention, which were hanging right next to these as you described.  It was 20 bucks tho for the 3 volt pack with 4 plugs (powers four separate accessories requiring 3Vdc) I guess they wouldn't be too much clutter;  I'd rather have just wires running to the lights without the big honkin box!  Oh well, just hide 'em under the snow I guess.

Wife just handed me a 50% of any one item coupon for Michaels tonight...So looks like my price for the Morrison House just went down to $17 and change!  Hope it's still there tomorrow.

Roland

[trainbrain]

If you can wait, everything (Christmas Stuff) is  marked down 70% after Christmas.  I got some great huge trees for about $1 each. 

[dwiemer]

Roland, as mentioned, if you wait till after Christmas, everything is marked way down.  Of course, really nice things like the carnival items tend to sell out and there are none left.  If something really floats your boat, get it with the coupon.  My experience with Lemax and others is really good.  Only issues I have had, one store front had a broken piece inside....exchanged at Michael's, another is the Toy Factory that the belt slips.  Also, most of the lights, small accessories, trees, etc. can still be found for those after Christmas sales.  The really nice buildings are gone early.

Some other places to check for ceramic buildings and accessories are Sears and K-Mart.  We picked up some nice buildings at both.  Also, I think it was at Michael's, we bought some scale RR crossing signals, but I have to figure out a way to make them work on demand when a train passes.

Dennis

[dougdagrump]

You mite also check Big Lots, they carry a line of ceramic buildings and accessories made by Lemax under a house brand. They won't have all the bells and whistles of the regular Lemax or Dept56 but they are significantly cheaper. We have a mixture of all the brands.

[kpolak]

Lowe's has a great selection of ceramic buildings and accessories as well as well.  Ferris wheels, Toy stores, and skating rinks were there last year.  If you get there early the selection should be pretty good.

Kurt

[daan]

I also have these streetlamps, but took off the christmass decorations. My entire layout is lit by LED's, I use a big AC transformer with variable voltage and a few rectifiers to give power to all those LED's. Untill know I have about 75 led's build in streetlights, houses, ships and diecast cars, but it will reach about 200 leds when it's finished.

I opted for a parallel setup, with a buswire on the underside of the layout. 2 big wires go round the layout, powered @ 3 volts and able to give 2,5 Amps. All leds are directly soldered to the buswires, which gives me no problems with calculating the desired resistor each time. It does have one drawback, some types of red led's cause all the others to shut down, because their internal resistance differs too much from the other colours. If needed those red lights are fed from a seperate batterypack. (only a few in some homemade signs).

Be aware though that the streetlamps do not "shine brightly", it's more like you can see that there is a latern, but it doesn't light up a whole area. If using LED's, use a lot of them, otherwise it's still too dark to see anything. (depending on the type of led's you're using..)

[Joe Hohmann]

As far as near/after Holiday "markdowns" go...if you see some you like, there's a good chance it will be sold-out a month before the holiday. Last year, the ONLY things available at our Michaels after Christmas were a few figures. Joe

[anjdevil2]

If you have a Garden Ridge in your area, I've found that some of the Lemax thngs are cheaper.
The Fire Station 33 was $69.99 at Michaels and $49.99 at Garden Ridge.

Sometimes Walmart has some stuff, too.  After Christmas there is usually a good selection, bought tress @75% off

Rich