I wanted to share the enhancements I made to the Walthers Palace Theater that I bought in the early 2000's. My layout's time period is 1956, so I went online and found posters for movies that actually played in summer/fall of that year. I have "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers" as my current feature, plus "Port Afrique" and "Pillars Of The Sun" as coming attractions. I added "COMING SOON" and "COMING NEXT WEEK" watermarks to those two and printed all four posters on regular paper. Behind the posters I added warm white LEDs, which are aimed at the rear of the posters and which replace the single stock incandescent bulb. For the film's name on the marquee I used kerning and variable character spacing in my word processor to give the appearance of individually-placed letters, then printed the "sign" onto clear address labels. Above both side doors I added Walthers HO scale wall lights, which I think scale very well in O scale. To power all this I replaced the stock power supply with a 5 volt 1 amp switching-type wall transformer. The outside lights need close to 12 volts, so inside the theater I installed a buck/boost converter to raise the 5 volts to around 11. You can't see it in the images, but I added "mortar" to the brick faces, a simulated tar-and-gravel roof in the rear, simulated rolled roofing on the sloped areas, and an extra vent stack in one rear corner. One of these days I'll add paper baffles to stop the light from leaking onto the sidewalk in front, and maybe a light in the ticket booth.
I would enjoy seeing what others have done with their Walthers (and now, Atlas O Elektra) theaters. This has always been one of my all-time favorite structures.
Joel
