Subject:
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show report March 29-30, 2003
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.novalug
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Date:
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Mon, 26 May 2003 18:34:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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3274 times
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Better late than never (1)
NOVALUG had its first two day show at Cole Harbour Place in Dartmouth in
late March. It was nice not to have to tear it all down on Saturday
evening. This was our first layout with more than just the three
founding members.
They layout was small as we were given an area about 2 1/2 by 24 feet (2
x 19 large grey baseplates) to work with. Pictures can be found here
Jean-Marc Detraz:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=38639
Lawrence Livesey:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=38963
Gail Meagher:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=39046
Pictures from store owner who ran show
http://www.georgesmodeltrains.com/show2003/show2003.htm
of particular interest is his comment by the pictures of our layout
"Vast crowds were drawn to the large Lego train layout."
Setup on Friday went fairly well. Lawrence, Ken Partridge and I set
things up in under six hours. This was the first time we tried having
the table completely covered in studs. This added to the setup time
(plus most of the baseplates were mine) but brought the layout together
more. The track was raised up one plate above the baseplates to allow
for the curves. All the trains ran smoothly on the track.
Saturday started with making sure Sam Cohen found the place. LEGO
license plates makes cars easier to spot! Sam's vast supply of monorail
track finished off the layout, and we were still fiddling with some
minifigs when the wave of spectators swept over us. We ran James
Powell's DCC trains for awhile, allowing us to have three trains moving
on the single loop. This lead to our only
non-mountain-tunnel-clearance-related derailment. The engine stayed on
the tracks, but two green passenger wagons (10015) and two of them in
blue went sailing to the floor. This gave us the chance to impress some
of the other displayers by having them back on the track in a few
minutes.
Sunday was less crowded. We also duct taped the stanchions to the floor
so that we didn't have to keep moving them out. Our latest recruit,
George Chapman , dropped by in the afternoon and ran his 4561 Railway
Express that he bout after seeing our first show. Our table was next to
Pat and David Othen http://othen.go.to/ who sell great pictures and
video of trains. After drooling over their pictures of a rail grinder,
they gave me couple of pictures of it for free. Very nice people!
Teardown went quickly with lots of helpers. We had everything but the
mountain packed and in cars within an hour of the show closing, and the
mountain only took another 15 minutes.
Things we learned:
- having the track one plate above the baseplates increases setup and
teardown time slightly, but lets the trains run very smoothly.
- letting the trains continue to run while you start takedown (agent
orange - first thing to go is the plants) annoys the parents of the kids
who won't leave until everything stops :).
- The second row of rope around the stanchions works well. Only a
couple of kids ducked under it. A guy from another display suggested
the only way to fix that was to electrify it :).
- Duct taping the stanchion bottoms in place helps stop creep as they
are not weighted.
- The people from clubs putting on train shows are incredibly nice to
work with.
- have lots of ways to access the track in long tunnels as the train
will always have trouble there.
Gail Meagher
(1) volunteering for medical research can make you quite ill :(.
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