To LUGNET HomepageTo LUGNET News HomepageTo LUGNET Guide Homepage
 Help on Searching
 
Post new message to lugnet.eventsOpen lugnet.events in your NNTP NewsreaderTo LUGNET News Traffic PageSign In (Members)
 Events / 1704
1703  |  1705
Subject: 
COLTC at Honda Day 2005 - Show Report
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.events
Date: 
Mon, 3 Oct 2005 22:19:22 GMT
Highlighted: 
(details)
Viewed: 
2717 times
  
COLTC @ Honda Day 2005 - 09/10/2005

On Saturday, September 10, 2005, COLTC participated in Honda Day 2005 at the Columbus Convention Center. Over 40,000 Honda employees and their families were expected to attend. We put together a display measuring approximately 20 ft x 12.5 ft, which included a downtown area, train yard, airport and a beautiful tree-lined neighborhood.

Set-up began on Friday afternoon, and continued beginning at 9am on Saturday morning. In total, it took about 6 hours of set-up time, with appromimately 7 club members lending a helping hand, to prepare for the show.

Every show must have it’s snafu, and this show was no exception. Somewhere between a club member’s house and the trailer, the regulators and wiring for the trains were left behind. The layout included an inner and outer loop, as well as a monorail. The trains are a crowd hit, so it was important that we got the trains up and running. Thankfully, club treasurer Joe Woolley came to the rescue by driving all the way across town to his house to pick up what we needed!

Included in the downtown section were five Columbus skyscrapers (Nationwide, Verne Riffe, Rhodes, Richland and AEP), as well as the riverfront, a drive-in theater, graveyard, complete with somber funeral, and two gorgeous city blocks. Minifigs looked on as a crane pulled a taxi out of the river. More excitement was to be had downtown as a band of robbers tried to get away with LEGO cash!

And who can forget the monkeys?

The train yard was full of a variety of trains, and usually had an audience of amazed kids and parents throughout the day. Periodically, club member Benn Coifman would swap out the trains on the inner and outer loop with one of the train yard trains. Most of the trains were run at some point on Saturday, as excited kids looked on.

A new addition to the display was the airport section, which included a terminal, hanger and many different types of planes. The hanger roof was quite creative, using 16 x 32 tan baseplates bent to form the roof. Thankfully, there were no accidents with the bricks holding the baseplates in place and the roof remained intact for the entire show.

Quaint pastel-colored houses mingled with victorian grace in the residential portion of the display. A large, flower-trimmed walkway made its way through the neighborhood, allowing minifigs easy access to each of the homes. The neighorhood was anchored by Paul Janssen’s Shadows on the Teche, a National Historic Trust plantation house build in southern Louisiana between 1831 and 1834. The inclusion of the Shadows was especially poignant given the devastation in southern Louisiana caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Around the corner from the houses were the more commercial buildings of the residential area. A hotel, school house, complete with school bus and soccer playing kids, and McDonald’s restaurant lined the street. McDonald’s was a huge crowd pleaser. Nearly everyone who passed the display commented on it.

Many of the festival goers, kids and adults alike, took time out to stop at the LEGO free-build table. Even a storm trooper took time out of his busy storm trooper schedule to sit down and build for a while. One young man created a Mig fighter plane, which was later added to the airport section of the display. Everyone really seemed to enjoy having the opportunity to create some of what they saw in our LEGO town.

The show ended at 9pm as club members scurried to take down what had taken 6 hours to put up. It took less than an hour to get everything into boxes and the tables folded up, which is close to a club record! As always, we were sad to see it go back into boxes, but we were happy in the knowledge that we put on a good show.

Reported by: Kirsten Lynch

To discuss the show, please check out this thread on the COLTC message board.

Galleries: Benn Coifman John Bucy



1 Message in This Thread:

Entire Thread on One Page:
Nested:  All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:  All | Brief | Compact
    

Custom Search

©2005 LUGNET. All rights reserved. - hosted by steinbruch.info GbR