Miniatronics simulated fire and flame troubleshooting

[rrbluesman]

This is my first time trying to produce a burning building on my train layout; I bought the Miniatronics 100-101-01 simulated fire and flame from my hobby shop, brought it home and tested it, nothing happened, didn't light up or do anything. I returned it to the store and exchanged it. The exchanged item works on the test transformer, I installed it on my layout, all per instructions, and for about 5 minutes it worked on the layout and then went out. The package says it is "random flashing", so I left it go thinking it would come back on at some point after a few minutes, and it never did after 30 minutes of waiting. I have not been able to find much useful to me on google to troubleshoot, can anyone else provide some ideas or past experiences with this simulated fire and flame? Thanks!

-Ed

[glennk419]

I can't help you with the Miniatronics unit and unfortunately, my experience with their tech support and customer service has been abysmal (three emails with a question about a constant lighting kit and no response). I built a simulated campfire for my layout using flashing LED's from tea light candles that you can get at any craft store. I bundled three of them together in conjunction with a Sleuthe smoke unit and it works quite well ( a visitor once thought my layout was on fire). The LED's are powered by a 5v phone charger and the smoke unit by a spare 12v supply.