Subject:
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Re: SCLTC FRRD 2005 Photos
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains.org.scltc
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Date:
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Thu, 12 May 2005 00:28:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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3734 times
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In lugnet.trains.org.scltc, Tim David wrote:
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This is one of those photo galleries that makes me depressed (wait!) but
...
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Tim-
First, take 2 Vallium and come back in an hour...
Seriously, thanks for the comments.
SCLTC is of course a club. As you note, we have 15 members. Of them, 13
contributed to this layout. The contributions ranged from modifying a few
switches to various items across serveral tables to one table to a few tables to
a family of 4 who contributed over 30 tables of stuff.
Thomas Michon is our club photographer and webmaster. He takes shots with the
website in mind and uses a very good Sony DSCF717 (if you’ve seen it, you’d know
it: it’s mostly lens with a little bit of camera attached). The camera has high
resolution, great depth of field, and macro mode focus.
Thomas does like to shoot from a low point of view, often looking upwards.
As for “making the layout seem huge”, truth is, it IS huge.
How our club “works”: We “meet” almost entirely on the Internet using our own
private email list. We meet in person just a few times a year just to have fun
and we occasionally meet to do a trial run if we are doing something completely
new. Oddly, this last layout contained the highest percentage of all new stuff
since our first layout in 2002, but we did not have a trial run for it. The key
to our layout success is having a detailed plan that we can distribute
electronically and update as needed. We used to use Track Designer, but we now
do our layouts entirely in Adobe Illustrator and distribute them as PDFs so the
Mac and LINUX folks can read them too. We draw mulitple transparent layers that
correspond to track/table levels and add layers for structures, ownership, and
other information. For this layout, we imposed a grid coordinate system so that
every table section could be referred to by coordinates. This proved to be
extremely useful in planning, setup, and teardown. By labeling each table with
its coordinates and labeling each crate slot with the coordinates of the tables
it held, the setup and teardown process became much easier.
We don’t meet to build. Building is 99% handled by members individually or
working in small groups. This layout all came together for the very first time
at 15:00 on Friday afternoon and was substantially completed at midnight (we had
a few wrinkles owing to new members and some first time issues using multiple
reversing loops). But we were well enough organized that we had the truck locked
up just 3 hours after show close.
We have a little club LEGO track and baseplates to cover emergencies if someone
cannot make it at the last moment, but 99% of what’s on the tables is owned by
individual members.
SCLTC covers the region from the Mexican border to Bakersfield, which is the
southern half of California.
The quality of the layout is driven by the work of several members who relish
doing the best work they can. At this point, we have a core group of reusable
high quality structures that make it easy to set a style and standard for
growth.
We are very well organized with respect to putting on shows. Key elements are
our investment in infrastructure, meaning our versatile system of
interconnectible LEGO dimensioned tables, the custom crates we store and
transport the tables in, curtains, acrylic panels, poles, ropes, and (most
recently) modular wiring system for DCC.
Regarding “where are all the trains?”, we did have as many as 6 running at one
time (and have the equipment to run 12 simultaneously). This layout did not have
a yard, which is rare for us, so most of the rolling stock and engines was in
boxes under the tables. But because we ran DCC for the first time and had 6
reversing loops, we had a blast running the trains (and avoiding too many
collisions).
A final word: When a small child asks the common question “How on earth to you
build these incredible things?”, I often answer “Just like you, one brick at a
time.”
-Ted
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: SCLTC FRRD 2005 Photos
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| This is one of those photo galleries that makes me depressed (wait!) but also spurs me on to do Lego stuff. I look at it and think, I could never do that, but of course its not just the work of one person and if I work as part of a team I CAN do it! (...) (20 years ago, 11-May-05, to lugnet.trains.org.scltc, FTX)
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