My son could live on a diet of hot dogs and so I thought it would be appropriate if I added a personalized hot dog stand in his name to the layout. The thought came to me when I stumbled upon a Miller Engineering sign for the dog house. I had an MTH Road Side Vegetable stand (30-9088) that was going unused and figured that it would work well for this purpose. I should have taken a photo of it before I began the transformation. Oh well. What is nice about the building and I suppose all MTH buildings in general is that they are easy to disassemble.
The photo below is the base of the building. I added a heavy art board stock as a back wall and likewise a floor to which I added a paper sheet of brickwork. The furnishings are from an internet seller and I painted them to match what I recall to be diner furnishings in the 50s and early 60s. People of course always finish it off. I purchased a label maker several years ago and found that has really come in handy for so many purposes since then, and I’ll highlight that use more later.
I also removed the existing lighting and added LEDs. I had done that to an MTH signal tower and the effect is much better than the original appearance. The downward effect of the lighting makes the difference. From the windows, I removed the vegetable pictures and trays they were in - they were held in by small pieces of a glue tape and popped right out leaving nice clear windows.
Here’s the first photo with plates, hot dogs and sausages added. The blue plates are nothing more than the waste from a 3-hole punch. The dogs are painted 16 gauge wire - I guess the crowd was into footlongs on this days!
The sign is a piece of heavy white plastic cut to size. I then masked and painted it to have a border to accent it a bit. I attached the sign to the original MTH “Produce” sign with double sided tape and likewise did the same with the Miller’s sign. The lettering is peel and stick from the internet. Finally, the six individual signs (footlongs, etc) were done with the label maker. The 3/8 inch tape worked perfectly, although I had to double it up to avoid having bleed through from the original vegetable signs.
Here’s a view of the original sign from the back as well the wiring ribbon for the electronic sign.
A view from the side.
Here’s a better view of the building insides. I’ll add a few patrons outside when the stand finds its way to the layout.
Ultimately, the lighting is all DC. I used a 12v buck converter for the 4.5v Miller sign and the LED lights were 5v to 12v whose supply I could bleed off the 12v input to the buck converter. I could have used the 4.5v too for the lighting and I tried, but it was too dim. Enjoy!
You might want to treat yourself to a nice malt on ice! 
