Subject:
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Re: Questions about doing a museum show
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains.org
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:33:08 GMT
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Viewed:
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4640 times
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In lugnet.trains.org, Gail Meagher wrote:
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I’m looking to pick the brains of clubs who have done longer duration
shows, especially at a museum.
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..
Gail-
I’m sorry I only just noticed your post on LUGNET regarding train displays at
museums.
SCLTC has been doing a 10-12 week show at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum
every year since 2002. It’s the highlight of the year for us and we are a
fixture at the museum. Visitors come every year just to see us and to see what’s
new. We’re not masochists (much, anyway), so it’s generally been a positive
experience. The main pluses are that it’s a wonderful venue, we mingle with
“real” model railroaders (and have been accepted by them), we get a lot of
visitors, the spot is secure (it’s paid admission), the hours are modest (4
hours per day for 4 weekdays, 5 hours on weekends, and no hours on Monday), and
we get paid what amounts to our major source of club income every year. It’s
especially nice to display someplace where everyone knows what to expect and
things go smoothly.
The biggest benefit for us is the high ratio of display time (weeks) to setup
and tear down time (days) makes museums very rewarding. We have largely stopped
accepting invitation for 2 day weekend shows because they take more time to
setup and teardown than to operate. We are only making 1 exception this year for
the 3 day regional NMRA show in San Diego in October (and for a 2 day show we
have done every year since the club started).
The downside is for some of us, it’s fairly far away (180 miles round trip for
the 7 of us in Irvine, for example) and I have put upwards of 5000 miles on my
car during one run. We do go through motors, but so far LEGO has always replaced
them either without mention of LTCs, Jake, etc. or sometimes with. Last year was
the first time they made us send back the dead motors, previously they simply
asked how many and replace them. We went through 10 motors last year, but that’s
an uncertain number. Some motors die immediately while some run like champs the
whole time, but mostly the metal wheel contacts wear down and the motors make
screeching sounds before they finally stop working.
Our deal with the museum is that we man the layouts with club members on the
weekend and try to cover the weekday if we can (typically, we manage 2 of the 4
weekdays). We leave them with things set so that someone at the museum only has
to flick a single power switch to turn everything on and off. This has kept us
from running DCC at the museum since it’s too complex to run automatically. We
have used a dedicated RCX to detect when track power is applied and used it to
enable RCX based animation. We have also built a layout that could run either
with DCC or with eight LEGO Voltage Regulators (LVRs), but have yet to implement
a cutover switch so that we can easily run DCC when our members are present and
LVRs when they are not.
We have benefit from and enjoyed working with this museum a lot and recommend
it.
-Ted Michon
President
SCLTC
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Questions about doing a museum show
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| I'm looking to pick the brains of clubs who have done longer duration shows, especially at a museum. NovaLUG (Nova Scotia, Canada) has been approached by a museum, but the longest show we have done before was one day setup and two day display. In (...) (18 years ago, 13-Jul-06, to lugnet.trains.org, lugnet.trains)
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