Does anyone have any experience with the lighted & animated signs from Miller Engineering or Miniatronics.I work in N scale
Thanks,TJM
I have a couple of these in HO scale. This is the "Heartbreak Hotel," with an animated sign:
and this is Suzanne's House of Beef, with a static sign:
Each of these signs is single-sided. For the Pizza signs, I bought 2 (they come in Left and Right) and mounted them back-to-back. For the Hotel sign, I backed it with a non-illuminated styrene sign, since it faces the back of the layout and isn't terribly visible to most people. The Pizza signs, by the way, are out of production, but I found them at Walthers as a closeout.
The Hotel sign comes with a number of "chase" patterns which dictate how the lights will flash. Miller uses the same pattern set for many of their signs, so many are not useful, like the one that lights up each letter starting at the bottom. I intentionally chose the one where the "E" flickers a bit, like you would expect from a place where maintenance isn't always the highest priority.
The Hotel sign runs on 4.5 volts DC, and the Pizza sign on 3.0 volts DC. Each comes with a battery case. You can run them that way, but I found an appropriate wall wart and added some resistors, so that I can run them all the time and not worry about going through batteries.
Each unit comes with a small circuit board. I mounted the signs on the walls, as you can see, and put the boards inside the structures.
I really like these signs. I think they add a lot, and even give a bit of "action" to parts of the layout where there are no trains running. Both of my signs are the "small" size, though. Large is meant for O-gauge. I'm not sure if there are a lot of N-gauge models available. I'd like to see some of the larger animated signs, like the Citgo and White Fuel signs, come out in N-scale. The HO versions, while probably the right size from scaling the prototypes, are simply too big for my layout.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I have the Western Auto and Atlas Moving And Storage signs. Neatest thing since sliced bread. They come with a plastic battery holder for three AA batteries, but they can be hooked up to a wall wart. I used a 4 1/2 volt wall wart, and wired it into my layout lighting switch. Sorry no pics right now.
My brother, who is a non railroader, was really impressed with the animated Western Auto sign, on top of a warehouse on the layout. Brought back memories of the Western Auto stores of the 50s, and their Christmas toy catalog.