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"James J. Trobaugh" wrote:
>
> Wow! Looks great, that's a huge layout for your first show, excellent job. I
> can't way for the commentary.
Mike, you might want to post a link to the track plan.
> I really want to hear about the polarity switches on the controllers, what
> did they control?
> http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=50712
>
> And this cracked me up, what a great idea:
> http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=50740
Yes, the blimp flyer is an awesome idea. I made good use of an extra
circle of track and provided another simple source of animation.
> Also I'm interested in hearing how your "Kid's Railway" went, the kid's
> tables looked good.
Well, I've got more pictures I need to upload, but I'll give some
commentary on the setup and first day of showing.
I wasn't able to get off work early, so by the time I arrived Friday at
7:30 PM or so, things were pretty well set up. Thomas Main and I put
together the 12v loop and we also got some baseplates set up. When the
hall closed at 9:00 PM, Thomas and I joined his wife for dinner at IHOP
and then I went home and did some more building until 3:30 AM or so. I
picked up Thomas at his motel at 8:30 and we got back to the show by
9:00 AM to finish setting up for opening at 11:00. We weren't quite
finished, but we were ready to roll. Friday night I had decided that
some Paradisa was the best thing for the section I had available for
building (as seen in
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=50676 - this picture was
taken before I got much of my vehicles out. The water tower is also
mine, living on borrowed space, the airport in back also extends into
other space).
While there was some hard work for preparing, I don't think we over
extended ourselves at all for our first show. Cary Clark (the huge
buildings), James Beerman (the city section between Cary's buildings and
my Paradisa), Sheree Rosenkrantz (the amusement park), and Mike Walsh
(the city section in the other corner, plus the monorail station) were
all prepared with plenty of buildings. Chris Suich and Kendall (?) and
kids provided some of the rest, but most of all, Chris provided the
workshop which made it possible to build that many tables in a quick
amount of time (Mike, what was it, about 5 or 6 evenings to build plus
the dry run?), and the space to do a dry run (where we set up the tables
and the track, and played for a while). I would have liked to have more
MOCs but I just haven't got into a town building spree yet. I did add a
bunch of train cars. I added the 7715, 7719, and red/yellow 4547 Club
Car to Thomas Main's 7740. I also made 4 black 4549s and a ton of
containers (and settled for now at least on 4-wide containers). I'll
have to post details at some point on how I made the Ice Planet and
M-Tron containers. I came up with a pretty easy way to get 2x2 tiles
flush with the side of the container.
Running the show was pretty easy. We had a bunch of mishaps (the most
spectactular being a crash of my 6990 Futuron Monorail with Cary's black
and yellow monorail. They had a collision and both took a dive to the
floor and exploded. I managed to get most of it back together before
Cary got back with his lunch, only making one misteak on putting
together his train, and not figuring out how the motor shroud worked).
We had constant problems with the monorail because we were running two
trains chasing each other. Sometimes we didn't notice in time and wham.
Once I had stopped the faster train (the black and yellow one) and then
got distracted so Mike's 4 car Airport Shuttle when WHAM! A couple
times, we tried to avert disaster and either reversed a train right into
a collision or knocked the whole shebang over. Most of the train crashes
involved plowing into monorail wreckage and one incident where the
monorails collided and dumped over right on top of the train. We were
running two or three trains on each loop much of the show, and mostly
just having to separate them when they caught up and joined, though we
caused a few crashes while trying to switch trains. Kendall did an
awesome job of keeping the outside loop going pretty well just using the
passing siding to sideline and stop a train every once in a while (by
switching a train onto the siding and then killing power to it by
setting the turnout back to the mainline, the turnout at the other end
always stayed pointed to the mainline [I love the fact that model
railroad turnouts almost always allow a train to come in from the
direction with two legs even if the turnout is set the other way]).
I was impressed with how well the 12v ran. Once we got it set up, and
ironed a couple kinks out, it basically just ran the whole day. The
remote turnouts and a pair of signal tracks made it easy to swap back
and forth between the two trains (the other train was my 7735, which was
MISB until a few weeks ago when I built it at the meet at Sheree's
house). One thing I did to make for a smoother run was to use 9v wheels
on the cars of the 7740 train. I think this did make a difference (I
could have used real 12v wheels, but I'm not sure I have enough black
ones for the three cars I made, so part of my use of them was to have
all the coaches have matching wheels).
I only spared momentary notice of the kids table, but from what I could
see, kids were having a blast. I think a few train parts got mangled (I
saw a broken coupler at the end), and I'm sure a few pieces walked, but
overall, I'd say it was a smashing success (quite literally of course -
kids are kids, and the double knotted figure eight provides lots of
opportunity). TLC provided a K-8 to stock the table and we added some
additional parts from our own collections (notable car wheels and the
train wheels, motors, and baseplates).
We connected with at least one other AFOL, and probably several more. We
also gave at least one older child the incentive to go back and dig out
his LEGO. I'm sure a bunch of parents will be adding trains to their
children's collections, so overall, I'd say we did a great job of
outreach. One thing we really need is business cards with a few
strategic URLs and e-mail addresses.
Although I'm sure Mike has more to say about the relationships with
GATS, I have to say they run an excellent show. The show manager was a
great person to work with and is absolutely sold on LTCs. I'm not sure
how many of their shows he runs, but he talked about Seattle (PNLTC),
Florida (GFLTC), and Minneapolis (GMLTC). The Raleigh Civic and
Convention Center is an excellent facility. We had plenty of space, easy
access to power (run in channels in the floor so no cords dangling down
from the ceiling like I've seen in other venue) and a very pleasant
environment. Sunday I need to see if I can get up to the upstairs
section and get some good photos from above.
One last thing, if you see anything you want more pictures of let us
know tonight and perhaps we can manage to take some shots Sunday.
Frank
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