Subject:
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COLTC at Honda Day 2005 - Show Report
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events
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Date:
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Mon, 3 Oct 2005 22:19:22 GMT
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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
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