Subject:
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NCLTC Takes 1st Place at Raleigh GATS! (Long)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.announce, lugnet.loc.us.nc, lugnet.trains, lugnet.events, lugnet.trains, lugnet.trains.org, lugnet.trains.org.ncltc, lugnet.org.us.nclug
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.trains.org, lugnet.trains.org.ncltc, lugnet.loc.us.nc
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Date:
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Tue, 5 Aug 2003 04:22:56 GMT
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Highlighted:
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!!
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321 times
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This past weekend NCLTC had our layout on display at the Great American
Train Show (GATS) in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is the third GATS show
we have done and while our layout has always been popular, we have never won
the competition.
Much to our suprise, Sunday afternoon we were awarded 1st Prize! There was
no doubt that our layout consistently had the biggest crowd all weekend, but
as many LEGO Train Clubs can attest to, having the biggest crowd usually
doesn't mean much in the GATS competition. We were (and still are) pretty
excited about winning the contest and it was nice to see many of the other
groups come up and congratulate us.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477625
The weekend didn't start out so well for us though. I was in Portland, OR
for work last week and had scheduled myself to take the last flight from
Portland to Raleigh on Thursday night. When I got to the airport I learned
that my connecting flight to Dallas wasn't anywhere close to on time and
would miss my connection to Raleigh. I had an awful lot to do on Friday and
it was going to be a real problem if I wasn't at home! I managed to get as
far as Chicago on Thursday and flew from Chicago to Raleigh on Friday
morning. From the time I landed it was a scramble the rest of the day until
GATS kicked us out at 9:00 PM on Friday night.
Even though we had reviewed our track plan many times, we simply overlooked
the fact that the track on top of Cary's subway module was in a fixed
location. Doh! We realized about 8:30 that our track plan wouldn't work!
Fortunately we were able to adjust (we added a local loop and re-routed the
other line) and moved on. The monorail spirals ran into Joe Meno's museum,
something else we missed on the plan. A little more rearranging and we
resolved that dillema. I had mentioned to Cary as we were getting ready to
leave that this was about the most inefficient set up we had ever done - six
hours of set up and we still had quite a bit of work to do in the morning.
On Saturday we all staggered in (me being one of the last) and finished
getting everything set up just as the show opened. We were about as far
from the entry as you could get yet by 11:02 we had people around our
layout.
This was by far the busiest of the three GATS shows we have done. Press
coverage for this event was much better than in past years, the weather was
rainy on Saturday, and the venue was air conditioned (unlike last year).
All of these contributed to a show which I'd estimated was twice as busy as
last year.
We have lots of pictures, Joe Meno has posted quite a few in the last 24
hours including some very nice video clips.
Friday (Setup): http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52264
Saturday: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52265
More from Saturday: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52267
Sunday: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52269
I have also uploaded some pictures that my daughter (who is six) and I took
although these folders are currently unmoderated:
Friday: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52400
Saturday: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52308
Sunday: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52309
Some of the highlights from the show were:
Will Pedersen's Roundhouse:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477537
Will Pedersen's model of the Backshop at Spencer (the old Southern Railway
maintenance facility):
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477522
Cary Clark's Subway Module
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477483
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477627
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477507
Mike Walsh's Amusement Park:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477553
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=478775
Joe Meno's Natural Science Museum:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=478764
We had Cary's monorail spirals out again (these are a crowd favorite):
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=478765
Tom Staley of Tom's Train Station (a local model railroad store) loaned me a
wireless video camera. On Saturday night I built a locomotive to mount the
camera in and on Sunday we ran the train for a while with the camera on.
This was a real crowd pleaser although the battery life of the camera isn't
very long (about 15 minutes). I was able to capture some video of the train
running on three of the five train loops we had operating.
Video from a wireless camera mounted on a LEGO locomotive:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52316
For this show we also held a canned food drive to support the Food Bank of
North Carolina. Anyone who donated two cans of food was entered in a
drawing to win a LEGO train. We gave away a My Own Train locomotive and two
additional cars. We were overwhelmed by the donations, we completely filled
two collection barrels that are a little larger than a 55 gallon oil drum!
Barrels: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477586
The play area was extremely busy all weekend. Special thanks out to my
father-in-law, Rex Tracy, who manned the play area almost all weekend.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=477584
Lastly, we did well in the local media coverage department. Our layout was
featured on the news of four different local TV stations, one on Saturday
night, and three on Sunday night. One of the oddest clips (WB22) featured
an interview with a classic model railroad fan talking about what he came to
the show to see. It was all about seeing regular model railroading stuff
but it was filmed in front of our layout! The best coverage was from NBC17.
I have captured all of the clips and uploaded them to BrickShelf.
Media Coverage (after moderation):
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=52306
Deep links:
NBC17 -
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mpw/TrainShows/GATS-2003/MediaCoverage/nbc17_news_clip_030803.mpg
WB22 -
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mpw/TrainShows/GATS-2003/MediaCoverage/wb22_news_clip_030803.mpg
News14 -
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mpw/TrainShows/GATS-2003/MediaCoverage/news14_news_clip_030803.mpg
WRAL -
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mpw/TrainShows/GATS-2003/MediaCoverage/wral_news_clip_030802.mpg
I think that is about it although I am sure I missed something. We had a
blast and we are all tired (even 24 hours later). We met a lot of really
nice people and we hope we have convinced a few more to come join our merry
band of builders. It was also nice to do a bit of community service and
quite a few parents commented on how they appreciated what we were doing for
the Food Bank.
If you stuck with me this long - thanks!
Mike
--
Mike Walsh - mike_walsh at mindspring.com
http://www.ncltc.cc - North Carolina LEGO Train Club
http://www.carolinatrainbuilders.com - Carolina Train Builders
http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=mpw - CTB/Brick Depot
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